This is one of the most famous autoimmune diseases, characterized by a tightening of the skin. Depending on the extent, it is classified as limited or diffuse systemic sclerosis, and sometimes affects other organs, such as the lungs, kidney, heart, and digestive system. As a differentiator, scleroderma occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues in the body, leading to a breakdown of collagen. Patients suffer from an overproduction of this protein, which causes a tightening of the skin, as well as inflammation of some parts of the body. This causes damage to organs and joints.
Scleroderma is more common in women between the ages of thirty and fifty, and affects, according to the Spanish Society of Rheumatology, one in every 50,000 people.
Although the origin is still unknown, certain environmental factors are known to promote it, such as exposure to silica – for example, in mining and sandblasting activities – and to certain drugs.
The evolution of the disease can be more or less rapid depending on the degree of affectation, and the symptoms vary from one person to another. Almost all patients show the so-called Raynaud’s phenomenon, whereby the fingers change color in response to cold. Some have only a few manifestations, while others suffer various symptoms quickly. Even so, the normal thing is that the first to be noticed are the narrowing and hardening of the blood vessels, fibrosis or hardening of the tissues and organs of the body (as a consequence of the increase in the production of collagen), and in some cases also connective tissue disease – a disease that affects the body’s connective tissue. On the other hand, in the diagnosis it is usually found serum antibodies – substances that react against the cells or proteins of the body itself.
No known treatment
According to the American College of Rheumatology, “there is no drug that has been clearly shown to stop or reverse the main symptom of thickening and hardening of the skin” and that drugs that have been shown to be of great help in the treatment of other autoimmune diseases are usually , such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, “generally do not work in people with scleroderma”, so in this disease it is normal to seek to reduce individual symptoms and prevent further complications, “with a combination of medications and personal care” .
In fact, rheumatologists are very insistent on avoiding certain factors that are known for sure to aggravate the disease, such as exposure to cold, as indicated by Patricia Carreira, a rheumatologist at the 12 de Octubre University Hospital in Madrid. To this he also adds quitting smoking, since “tobacco causes a contraction of the arteries that carry blood to the fingers, and therefore makes Raynaud’s phenomenon much worse”, and avoiding situations that cause stress or anxiety: ” it has shown that it also increases the contraction of the arteries that carry blood to the fingers ”, concludes Dr. Carreira.
