Antiphospholipid syndrome has been a topic of ongoing research in different areas of medicine. Clinical and laboratory diagnosis are performed taking into account international guidelines to identify and characterize antiphospholipid syndrome. The primary objective of this article is to describe scientific advances in the study of the antiphospholipid syndrome, current classification criteria, the role of anticardiolipin antibodies, anti-β2 glycoprotein I and lupus anticoagulant, and to describe the pathogenic and immunological mechanisms in which these antibodies are involved. Furthermore, this article describes some of the associated clinical and diagnostic procedures currently used for antiphospholipid syndrome identification.