Anti-zinc transporter protein 8 autoantibodies significantly improve the diagnostic approach to type 1 diabetes: an Italian multicentre study on paediatric patients

Table 1 Prevalence of specific autoantibodies in ICA-positive (ICA+) and ICA-negative (ICA−) patients

	No.	GADA+ (%)	IA-2A+ (%)	ZnT8A+ (%)	autoAbs negative	Only ZnT8A+
All patients (no. 130)
ICA+	46	52.2	58.7*	43.5	4 (8.7 %)	4 (8.7 %)
ICA−	84	60.7	35.7*	47.6	18 (21.4 %)	5 (5.9 %)
At onset patients (no. 35)
ICA+	12	50	66.7	83.3	0 (0 %)	2 (16.7 %)
ICA−	23	52.2	39.1	52.2	7 (30.4 %)	3 (13 %)

In the overall series of patients with available data about ICA IFI investigation, GADA- and ZnT8A-positive patients did not differed significantly in ICA+ and ICA− subjects, while IA-2A were more prevalent in ICA+ (*OR 2.56, 95 % CI 1.22–5.35, p = 0.016). Of note, only 4/130 (3.1 %) were positive only at ICA investigation versus 5/130 (3.8 %) positive only at ZnT8A investigation. When considering only patients at disease onset, ICA+ cases were completely intercepted by at least one positive autoantibody among GADA, ZnT8A and IA-2A. Furthermore, the ZnT8A contribution allowed to detect 3/35 (8.6 %) of patients who previously were classified as all negative (ICA and specific autoantibodies)

ISSN: 2038-3274