Predicting Disease Progression in Scleroderma with Skin and Blood Biomarkers.

摘要

Scleroderma (Systemic Sclerosis, SSc) is a chronic, incurable autoimmune disease associated with high morbidity and mortality primarily due to SSc-lung disease (1, 2). There is a large variability in individual patients courses and current predictors of disease progression are inadequate. The overall objective of the proposed research is to develop reliable predictors for clinical outcomes, particularly interstitial lung disease, in scleroderma, utilizing the biospecimens and longitudinal clinical data in the GENISOS cohort to perform an analysis combining data from multiple areas to develop robust prediction models for ILD progression. The model will include genotypic data, gene expression profiling and cytokine/analyte levels, in addition to clinical parameters of pulmonary function tests and chest CAT (computer assisted tomography) scans. In the first year we have focused on patient recruitment, clinical characterization, specimen collection (DNA, RNA, skin biopsies, serum, plasma, monocytes). We have begun the analysis of serum analytes and gene expression. We have prepared 3 abstracts accepted for presentation at the annual American College of Rheumatology meeting Nov 16-19, 2014 in Boston.