Objective: The presence of anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) are important indicators of systemic connective tissue diseases. Anti-DFS70 autoantibody is also known to be found in healthy individuals and has not yet been identified in relation with diseases. The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between clinical complaints, diagnoses and inflammation parameters [C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and rheumatoid factor (RF)] of patients with anti-DFS70 antibody positivity detected by Indirect Immune Fluorescent-ANA (IIF-ANA) and Immunoblot method.

Method: A total of 450 patients, 412 (91.5%) women and 38 (8.5%) men, between the ages of 4–90, were included in the study. The clinical diagnoses and inflammation parameters of the patients were evaluated retrospectively.

Results: Complaints were pain (126/136) and rash, dyspnea, pruritus (10/136). While inflammation was not detected in 81 (64.3%) of the patients with pain complaints, it was found in 45 (35.7%) and was found to be statistically significant (p=0.001). Inflammation was found to be negative in 106 (67.9%) patients with systemic involvement of connective tissue, positive in 50 (32.1%) patients (p<0.001), negative in 19 (95%) and positive in 1 (5%) patients with urticaria (p<0.001). Ten of the 60 patients with a definitive diagnosis had systemic involvement of the connective tissue, 10 had urticaria, and 40 had different diagnoses.

Conclusion: It was concluded that DFS70 positivity was higher in women and this pattern may accompany many diseases. Our study suggests that the cause of pain may be the DFS70 antibody when inflammation parameters are eliminated, and that there may be a relationship between urticaria and DFS70 autoantibodies.