Welcome to ANApatterns.org, the official website for the International Consensus on Antinuclear Antibody (ANA) Patterns (ICAP). ICAP was initiated as a workshop aiming to thoroughly discuss and to promote consensus regarding the richness and nuances of morphological patterns observed in the indirect immunofluorescence assay on HEp-2 cells (HEp-2 IFA). The ICAP initiative was implemented at the 12th International Workshop on Autoantibodies and Autoimmunity (IWAA, São Paulo, Brazil) by members of the Autoantibody Standardization Committee (ASC), a subcommittee of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) Quality Assessment and Standardization Committee and affiliated with the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC). The ICAP committee is operating as an ASC sub-committee.
Illustrative images were submitted for each pattern and ICAP members voted and selected the most representative ones paying attention to pixel dimension, resolution, and size. The highest ranked images for each pattern are displayed on this web site. (For an introduction of the website with some graphic images, click here.)
The ICAP committee acknowledges that the term ANA is outdated as discussed in several publications [1, 2] and yet ANA is still most commonly used in the current literature. We have proposed to use the term HEp-2 IFA to precisely describe the test in practice and used in most ICAP publications [3, 4]. Anti-Cell (AC) is used in ICAP coding of HEp-2 IFA patterns [3, 4]. Although the term anti-cellular antibody has been used in place of ANA by ICAP [2] and others [1], there is support for and reservations about its accuracy because the term “anti-cellular" also encompasses a wide spectrum of autoantibodies detected by other assays – e.g. ANCA, ASMA, APCA.
1. Agmon-Levin, N., et al., International recommendations for the assessment of autoantibodies to cellular antigens referred to as anti-nuclear antibodies. Ann Rheum Dis, 2014. 73(1): p. 17-23.
2. von Muhlen, C.A., et al., How to report the antinuclear antibodies (anti-cell antibodies) test on HEp-2 cells: guidelines from the ICAP initiative. Immunol Res, 2021. 69(6): p. 594-608.
3. Damoiseaux, J., et al., Clinical relevance of HEp-2 indirect immunofluorescent patterns: the International Consensus on ANA patterns (ICAP) perspective. Ann Rheum Dis, 2019. 78(7): p. 879-889.
4. Chan, E.K.L., et al., Report of the First International Consensus on Standardized Nomenclature of Antinuclear Antibody HEp-2 Cell Patterns 2014-2015. Front Immunol, 2015. 6: p. 412.
| Fri, 24 Jul 20 |
ICAP training Module 1 available. Our first ICAP training module is now online. To get to it, you have to register, login, and follow the training icon on the top menu. |
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| Tue, 07 Jan 20 |
Information from the ICAP clinical relevance publication (Damoiseaux et al, Ann Rheum Dis 78: 879-89, 2019) is now incorporated to the website. |
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| Mon, 04 Mar 19 |
The 5th ICAP Workshop held on September 9, 2019 in Dresden, one day prior to the 14th Dresden Symposium on Autoantibodies |
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Submit your question to ICAP. Only confirmed users can submit problems.If you are not already registered,Click here to begin.The submitted questions will be sent to the ICAP coordinator Edward KL Chan（echan@ufl.edu）and Luis EC Andrade（luis.andrade@unifesp.br）. Simple questions will be answered in 24 hours. Complex questions are sent to multiple ICAP members to reach a consensus or provide different perspectives, and may take 72 hours to 2 weeks to answer.Click here to
