The Human Autoantibody Response to Apolipoprotein A-I Is Focused on the C-Terminal Helix: A New Rationale for Diagnosis and Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease?

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide and new approaches for both diagnosis and treatment are required. Autoantibodies directed against apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) represent promising biomarkers for use in risk stratification of CVD and may also play a direct role in pathogenesis.

Methodology: To characterize the anti-ApoA-I autoantibody response, we measured the immunoreactivity to engineered peptides corresponding to the different alpha-helical regions of ApoA-I, using plasma from acute chest pain cohort patients known to be positive for anti-ApoA-I autoantibodies.

Principal Findings: Our results indicate that the anti-ApoA-I autoantibody response is strongly biased towards the C-terminal alpha-helix of the protein, with an optimized mimetic peptide corresponding to this part of the protein recapitulating the diagnostic accuracy for an acute ischemic coronary etiology (non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction and unstable angina) obtainable using intact endogenous ApoA-I in immunoassay. Furthermore, the optimized mimetic peptide strongly inhibits the pathology-associated capacity of anti-ApoA-I antibodies to elicit proinflammatory cytokine release from cultured human macrophages.

Conclusions: In addition to providing a rationale for the development of new approaches for the diagnosis and therapy of CVD, our observations may contribute to the elucidation of how anti-ApoA-I autoantibodies are elicited in individuals without autoimmune disease.