Article Medically Reviewed By:
Naomi Rothfield, MD
Professor of Medicine University of Connecticut Health Center Farmington, CT
Overview
What Is It?
Scleroderma is a chronic, autoimmune disease that can cause hardening and thickening of the skin and attack the heart, lungs, kidneys and gastrointestinal tract.
Women are about four times more likely than men to be afflicted with scleroderma, a chronic, autoimmune disease that most often strikes women during middle age. It can cause hardening and thickening of the skin and attack the heart, lungs, kidneys and gastrointestinal tract.
The disease iscaused by an overproduction of collagen in your body's connective tissue. Collagen is normally responsible for keeping your skin and organs supple, but when it is overproduced, it makes tissue thick and immobile.
Scleroderma literally means "hard skin," but the disease is most serious when it affects internal organs, hardening the tissues of the lungs, heart, kidneys, intestinal tract, muscles and joints. This stiffening can seriously harm the circulatory, digestive and respiratory systems.
According to the Scleroderma Foundation, an estimated 300,000 people in the United States have the disease in one of its forms.
What causes scleroderma is unknown, but some early stage research suggests the involvement of both environmental and genetic factors. It appears likely that some people are genetically predisposed to scleroderma, but that the disease only arises when some environmental factor or combination of factors—exposure to certain chemicals, for example—triggers it. Though scleroderma affects members of all ethnic groups, researchers have found a high prevalence of the disease in Oklahoma Choctaw Native Americans. Additionally, African-American women seem to be more seriously affected when they get the disease. These facts reinforce the notion that there are chromosomal factors at work.
Researchers have discovered autoantibodies in scleroderma patients that are not seen in other autoimmune diseases. Learning how and why these antibodies form will lead to better understanding of the mechanisms that underlie this disorder.
Despite a possible genetic component, the disease isn't considered hereditary; it is rare for two close relatives to develop the disease. And scleroderma is not contagious.
Occupational exposure to silica dust (not silicone) has been linked to a scleroderma-like disease, particularly in men.
Exposure to solvent mixtures used in paint thinners and removers have been reported to increase the risk of scleroderma in women, according to a study reported in the March 2003 edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology. However, a similar more recent review published in the Journal of Rheumatology revealed that although scleroderma affects women more than men, among people who have been exposed to solvents, men are at a greater risk of the disease.
Scleroderma is categorized as an autoimmune disease. Such dise...
Click here to read more from Healthy Women
