Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) gets a new parameter to be detected via the IMMray blood test developed by Immunovia, a Swedish company which observed promising findings in a clinical study conducted in conjunction with Linköping University.

The results revealed that patients testing negative for antibodies to cyclic citrullinated peptides (CCP) could be easily picked by the IMMray test. The existing gold standard assay fails to identify anti-CCP negative RA patients though they amount to about 25-30% of the total cases of RA.

122 subjects devoid of rheumatoid factor (RF) and anti-CCP and 94 healthy subjects as controls were included in the study. Additional 367 RA patients testing anti-CCP or RF-negative, or positive were also included in the study. The IMMray test showed 90% accuracy in testing all the RA patients.

Immunovia CEO Mats Grahn said: “The capability of IMMray biomarker signatures to diagnose CCP negative patients with accuracy over 90% is, in fact, a remarkable breakthrough. These very convincing results give us the confidence to also focus on autoimmunity and CCP negative RA.”

The company also aims at conducting further research to verify the results of the current study and get the assay ready for the market, added Grahn.

Complex bioinformatics and antibodies constitute IMMray which include machine learning algorithms that enable segregation of related biomarkers. A number of autoimmune disorders presenting with similar manifestations can be differentiated with the help of this test’s biomarker signatures.

Linköping University Clinical and Experimental Medicine department professor Thomas Skogh said: “This novel study is particularly interesting since, until now, we have been unable to detect the significant number of RA patients not identified by anti-CCP testing. Exceeding 90% accuracy already in this preliminary study clearly indicates that IMMray signatures have a great potential to diagnose and help to manage autoimmune diseases by the aid of a simple blood test.”