Therapeutic Advances in Gastroenterology (Mar 2021)

Rapid point-of-care anti-infliximab antibodies detection in clinical practice: comparison with ELISA and potential for improving therapeutic drug monitoring in IBD patients

  • Sonia Facchin,
  • Andrea Buda,
  • Romilda Cardin,
  • Nada Agbariah,
  • Fabiana Zingone,
  • Manuela De Bona,
  • Debora Zaetta,
  • Lorenzo Bertani,
  • Matteo Ghisa,
  • Brigida Barberio,
  • Edoardo Vincenzo Savarino

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1756284821999902
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14

Abstract

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Anti-drug antibodies can interfere with the activity of anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) agents by increasing drug clearance via direct neutralization. The presence of anti-drug antibodies is clinically relevant when trough drug concentrations are undetectable or sub-therapeutic. However, traditional immunoassay is not easily and rapidly accessible, making the translation of the results into treatment adjustment difficult. The availability of a point-of-care (POC) test for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) might represent an important step forward for improving the management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients in clinical practice. In this pilot study, we compared the results obtained with POC tests with those obtained by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a group of IBD patients treated with Infliximab (IFX). We showed that POC test can reliably detect presence of antibody-to-IFX with 100% of specificity and 76% sensitivity, in strong agreement with the ELISA test ( k -coefficient = 0.84).