Antibodies to oxidized LDL (oxLAb) are present in sera of patients with a variety of conditions, such as essential hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, carotid artherosclerosis and chronic renal failure.

The detection of oxLAb has been proposed as an indirect mar

ker of in vivo LDL oxidation and hence predictive of artherosclerosis.

The ImmuLisa™ oxLAb immunoassay takes into consideration the nonspecific binding of immunoglobulins to LDL and the antibody levels are expressed as the difference between absorbance values obtained on oxLDL vs. native LDL.

Heart antibodies as detected by IFA have been described in 40% of patients with biopsyproven myocarditis and in 20% of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. No antibodies have been detected in healthy controls.

Only 4% of patients with ischemic heart disease are positive for heart antibodies. These autoantibodies generally produce three types of staining reactions: sarcolemmal, diffuse cytoplasmic and striational, producing the so-called fibrillar pattern.