Prevalence of anti-locus coeruleus immunoreactivity in CSF of patients with autonomic failure.

In this study we evaluated by indirect immunohistochemistry the prevalence of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) antibodies reacting with structures of rat pons/medulla in patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA) (n = 29), Parkinson disease with neurogenic orthostatic hypotension (n = 13), or pure autonomic failure (n = 11) and in control subjects without autonomic failure (n = 33). About 10-20% of CSF samples had positive immunoreactivity to rat locus coeruleus (LC), regardless of clinical diagnosis. The results failed to confirm the previously reported high prevalence of immune binding to rat LC in CSF from patients with MSA.