Is it possible to enhance our expert knowledge from Wikipedia?
First and foremost young resident physicians, the so-called web 2.0 generation, are using the internet for daily work. Maybe the process of learning is developing and changing at the same time. Wikipedia gives the opportunity for everyone to acquire information for free and all over the place. The collaboration of everyone is necessary to improve the quality of medical issues on Wikipedia.
Although anti-PDGFR-alpha antibodies seem to be disease-specific when determined by bioactivity assays, these antibodies are also detected in normal subjects when immunological methods are used. Thus, anti-PDGFR-alpha antibodies may arise from natural autoantibodies. Possibly, SSc autoantibodies recognise a different epitope on the PDGFR-alpha molecule which triggers its stimulatory effect when analysed by functional assays. Alternatively, naturally occurring autoantibodies may even become pathogenic after affinity maturation and class switching in genetically susceptible subjects.