Presymptomatic autoantibodies in Sjögren's syndrome: what significance do they hold for the clinic?

In a number of autoimmune diseases, for example, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, it is known that autoantibodies are present before the clinical onset. Recently we have shown that autoantibodies can be found many years before symptom onset in primary Sjögren's syndrome. This implies that screening for autoantibodies may be used to identify individuals at risk of developing systemic autoimmune disease. Possibly, autoantibody screening may also contribute to detection of incipient malignancy. This concept stems from a novel finding, on scleroderma patients, suggesting that an anti-tumor immune response elicited by a mutated self-antigen will cross-react with the unmodified version of the self-antigen, and thus come to trigger the formation of autoantibodies.