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Connective tissue diseases

Systemic sclerosis: beyond limited and diffuse subsets?

Patients with systemic sclerosis present with varying clinical features, have different responses to therapy, and end up with different outcomes. Categorizing patients improves disease management. A new study now proposes that patients with systemic sclerosis and overlapping features of another connective tissue disease might form a distinct disease subset.

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Figure 1: Alternative systems of SSc classification.

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Acknowledgements

The authors' work is supported by grants from the NIH (AR42309 and HD55884).

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Correspondence to John Varga.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Varga, J., Hinchcliff, M. Systemic sclerosis: beyond limited and diffuse subsets?. Nat Rev Rheumatol 10, 200–202 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2014.22

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