Nucleolar ANA anyone??

[Flossie44]

So my daughter was being investigated for juvenile arthritis. Her ana has come back positive. And her ANA is described as nucleolar!

What on earth does this mean?! The letter doesn’t describe it at all!! Just states the results!! Typically I receive these on a Friday afternoon!!

Anyone?

It's an anti nuclear antibodies test. It's one of the factors they look for to assess whether your child has arthritis.

My daughter has JIA and she is ANA positive xx

What about nucleolar?

ANA result is usually given as a titre or more often as light intensity units - there are degrees of positivity and it is not diagnostic of anything in a lot of cases, especially in children- so try not to worry. Nucleolar pattern is more common in connective tissue disease, particularly scleroderma.
My DD has positive ANA antibody nucleolar pattern when she was 11 and being assessed for JIA. She's now 18, ANA is now negative and was never diagnosed with JIA. She has turned out to be coeliac though and still gets a lot of joint symptoms.

I think ANA patterns are much less predictive in children than in adults. Did they run an ENA test which is more specific for different disease? My daughter was unwell for a while and tested strongly positive for ANA (1:1280) with nucleolar pattern but negative ENA and several other negative tests. She does have low complement and occasionally lymphopenic. She has (touched wood) developed no signs of disease 2 years later.