Sami Khella, MD, explains why acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibody levels do not reliably reflect disease severity in individual patients, while noting a stronger correlation between antibody levels and disease activity in MuSK myasthenia.
Transcript
So let me unpack that question a little bit. For AChR patients, there’s no direct correlation for an individual patient between the level of antibody and the degree of severity of the myasthenia. It probably has to do more with the quality of the antibody rather than the quantity of the antibody.
On the other hand, MuSK myasthenia, for an individual patient, does show some correlation. Patients with active disease will have elevated levels, whereas the levels can be all over the place for AChR patients.
Now, for populations of patients, the levels do correlate. So patients with thymoma, for example, will tend to have higher overall levels. But that really doesn’t matter so much in the clinic and with the patient in front of you.
