EDITORIALE   Free access

La Rivista Italiana della Medicina di Laboratorio 2023 Marzo;19(1):1-5

DOI: 10.23736/S1825-859X.23.00183-4

Copyright © 2023 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: Italian

Is immunofluorescence about to disappear in clinical laboratories?

Nicola BIZZARO ✉

Laboratorio Unico Integrato di Patologia Clinica, Azienda Sanitaria Universitaria, Udine, Italia

The indirect immunofluorescence method (IIF) is the longest-lived in Laboratory Medicine. It has been used worldwide for more than 60 years for the search for autoantibodies in autoimmune diseases, both rheumatic and organ-specific. The huge technological evolution of the last decades is leading to reconsider its role in autoimmune diagnostics and accentuates its current limits towards faster, fully automated methods, with higher throughput, and often more accurate which may eventually replace IIF. In this article, I review the salient aspects, some of which still controversial, comparing the IIF method with the new technologies and with the new scenarios of autoimmune diagnostics.

KEY WORDS: Fluorescent antibody technique; Solid-phase synthesis techniques; Clinical laboratory techniques