Active clinical trials for "Scleroderma, Diffuse"

The public health impact of this study will be the application of the greater understanding of the oral health status, oral health related behaviors, and quality of life of patients with systemic sclerosis (scleroderma or SSc). It is hoped that risks and protective factors can be identified to be associated with the oral health status of adults with systemic sclerosis,leading to the development of interventions for improved oral health in this population,and providing the basis for a larger study of oral health problems of adults with systemic sclerosis.

Patients with scleroderma can develop heart failure due to high blood pressure in the lungs (a condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension). It is important to find pulmonary arterial hypertension early, so that it can be treated before heart failure develops. However, the tests that we now use to find the earliest form of this disease in scleroderma patients are not good enough. This study will examine whether tests performed during exercise can improve our ability to find early pulmonary arterial hypertension. The study will also try to identify genes that are responsible for the development of pulmonary arterial hypertension.

One of the major problems of systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients is suggested to be articular involvement. Mostly involved joints in SSc were reported as wrist, carpometacarpal-interphalangeal, foot, knee, hip and shoulder however there have been little knowledge on sacroiliac joint. Here the investigators plan a study on the involvement of this joint in SSc.

The study serves the identification of early forms of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in connective tissue disease and the hemodynamic follow-up of the investigated patients. The basic hypothesis is that PAH may start with a remodeling of small pulmonary arteries, which leads to a stiffening of the vessels, indicated by the inability to vasodilatation and thus a disproportional increase in pulmonary pressure during exercise. Recent studies have shown that a proportion of such patients may develop manifest PAH within a few years. The early identification of these patients and the understanding of the natural course of the disease may improve prognosis. The aim of the present study is to investigate hemodynamic and clinical changes in patients with connective tissue disease in a time interval of 3-5 years with a focus on the development of pulmonary hypertension.

Thirty subjects with systemic sclerosis and 30 age and sex matched controls without any known condition that should cause increased skin hardness in the fingers with undergo examination by manual palpation and durometer measured hardness of their digital tuft skin by 2 observers on 2 separate occasions. There will be 1 hour between individual observer's scorings. Observers will be blinded from the observer's scores and from their previous scores. Results will be tabulated and compared for manual scores versus durometer measurements, intra-observer scores by both methods and inter-observer scores by both methods.

The purpose of this study is to assess whether skin biopsy specimens from patients with diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (dcSSc) can be used as biomarkers (measures of activity and type) of disease to predict response to various experimental treatments. There are various experimental treatments being used in the treatment of slceroderma, but there is no way to predict response to any given therapy. The investigators will use DNA microarray to analyze the changes in gene expression in skin biopsies in response to various treatments. Our hypothesis is that the investigators will see changes in gene expression in response to various treatments that will give us insight into the cause of scleroderma. The investigators predict that they will be able to use this information to predict which experimental treatments will be beneficial to individual patients

Small bowel involvement is still recognized to be associated with great morbidity and mortality in SSc patients, leading particularly to malabsorption and intestinal pseudo-obstruction. Intestinal disorders directly related to SSc have, in fact, been reported to be one of the most common causes of death. In a previous prospective study, we have demonstrated the high prevalence of small intestinal involvement in SSc patients, using upper intestinal manometry; in turn, 88% of our SSc patients had upper intestinal motor disturbances. However, to date, no authors have yet analyzed the course of upper intestinal motor dysfunction in SSc. The aims of this study were therefore to assess the 5-year course of small bowel motor disorders, using manometry in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc), and to investigate for an association between upper intestinal motor dysfunction outcome and other clinical manifestations of SSc.

To conduct cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and patients with progressive systemic sclerosis (PSS), with and without associated lung disease.

This study is to determine if subjects with .systemic sclerosis have stimulatory autoantibodies to the PDGF receptor and to confirm activation (phosphorylation) of the PDGF receptor in skin sites with varying degrees of skin thickening

It is difficult to predict how a women with an autoimmune disease will do during pregnancy. Some women will improve, others will worsen. Some pregnancies progress normally and others become very complicated. The Duke Autoimmunity in Pregnancy (DAP) Registry will enroll women with autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and Sjogren's syndrome who wish to become, or already are, pregnant. We will follow these women throughout pregnancy to better understand how their autoimmune disease affects their pregnancy, and vice versa.