News and Resources

LAY SUMMARY

Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) is a devastating disease in which patients experience recurrent strokes, heart attacks, clots or other forms of thrombosis in their veins, and affected women suffer recurrent miscarriages. (The miscarriages are due to clotting in the fetal placenta leading ultimately to fetal death.) Affected patients are often under 50 years of age.

A striking characteristic of this disease is that patients produce auto-antibodies (antibodies directed against their own tissue) that bind substances called “phospholipids.” Phospholipids make up the membranes of all cells in the body, and it is believed that these antibodies can bind blood cells, such as platelets, making these cells clump together and cause clots.

It has been shown that when mice are injected with auto-antibodies, purified from the blood of patients with APS, the mice form large clots. However, it is still not certain how these antibodies actually cause the clots.

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) is a disorder complicated by recurrent arterial and venous thrombosis (e.g. cerebrovascular accident, myocardial infarction, pulmonary thromboembolism) and/or recurrent pregnancy losses. Patients have positive lupus anticoagulant or anticardiolipin tests attributable to antiphospholipid (aPL) antibodies.

Whether these antibodies are epiphenomena or play a causative role in the disorder is uncertain, but this distinction must be made to better manage affected patients. A diagnosis of APS is based on positive aCL and/or LA tests accompanied by one or more of the clinical symptoms.