News

Europe’s umbrella organization for 800 rare disease associations has developed a sweeping initiative to help the continent’s 30 million rare disease patients and their caregivers learn about their conditions, find assistance and receive treatment. Eurordis-Rare Diseases Europe hopes to improve the current piecemeal treatment and support program with a holistic,…

Treatment with pirfenidone fails to improve lung function in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc)-associated interstitial lung disease (ILD), results of a clinical trial show. Trial results were discussed at the 2019 Annual European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR) in Madrid, during an oral presentation titled “…

People with rare diseases know that the right government policies can make a big difference in the quality of their own lives, and those of their caregivers. But most lawmakers aren’t experts in even one well-known disease — let alone the world’s estimated 7,000 rare disorders. So how does the…

Higher blood viscosity may help clinicians identify patients with systemic sclerosis at risk of having pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a serious life-threatening respiratory complication. The finding was reported by Turkish researchers in the study “Whole blood viscosity in systemic sclerosis: a potential biomarker of pulmonary hypertension?”…

People with diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (dcSSc) treated with lenabasum keep improving after 21 months of treatment, results from a Phase 2 open-label extension study show. Robert Spiera, MD, from Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, and principal investigator of the Phase 2 study, shared the data in…

Older men with diffuse cutaneous systemic scleroderma (dcSSc) have more estradiol, a form of estrogen, compared with postmenopausal women with the disease, which may explain why scleroderma tends to be more severe in men, a study has found. Researchers also found that male patients with higher levels of…

Targeting a signaling molecule called CCL24 with a new antibody was seen to lessen inflammation and scarring (fibrosis) in a mouse model of systemic sclerosis (SSc), research shows. The study, “Blockade of CCL24 with a monoclonal antibody ameliorates experimental dermal and pulmonary fibrosis,” was published in journal Annals…

Michigan Medicine researchers have been awarded approximately $10.2 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Autoimmunity Centers of Excellence to explore potential treatments for autoimmune diseases, including scleroderma. Funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of NIH, the grant will be used to…

The mortality rate among people with systemic sclerosis (SSc) has not changed over time and continues to be high, according to a combined analysis of a French multicenter cohort study and a literature review. Apart from already reported prognostic factors, the researchers also found new potential predictors of SSc…

Certain cytokines of the IL-1 family may play important and distinct roles in the development of systemic scleroderma (SSc), in particular IL‐1β, which may contribute to worse tissue scarring, a study suggests. The findings appeared in the report, “Analysis of serum interleukin(IL)‐1α, IL‐1β and IL‐18 in patients…