View clinical trials related to Scleroderma.
Filter by:CoRDS, or the Coordination of Rare Diseases at Sanford, is based at Sanford Research in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It provides researchers with a centralized, international patient registry for all rare diseases. This program allows patients and researchers to connect as easily as possible to help advance treatments and cures for rare diseases. The CoRDS team works with patient advocacy groups, individuals and researchers to help in the advancement of research in over 7,000 rare diseases. The registry is free for patients to enroll and researchers to access. Visit sanfordresearch.org/CoRDS to enroll.
The primary intent of this study is to add to the body of knowledge on scleroderma patients with interstitial lung disease. While lung disease is recognized as the leading cause of death amongst patients with scleroderma, there is not a large body of literature describing the long-term morbidity and mortality rate of these scleroderma patients. For this reason, the investigators are following participants of the Scleroderma Lung Study (NCT00004563) after their participation in that study was concluded. In addition, the investigators will assess if the subjects who received one year of oral cyclophosphamide in the Scleroderma Lung Study experienced progression of their scleroderma-related lung disease following the end of the study.
The overall objective of the Scleroderma Registry is to support and promote the basic science and clinical research of this complex rheumatic disease at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). The registry facilitates our understanding of the clinical features, pathobiology, genetics of Scleroderma. This will ultimately lead to a potential treatment for this currently untreatable condition.
B cells are known to play an important role in auto-immune diseases by activating T cells, secreting inflammatory cytokines and autoreactive antibodies. However, a sub-type of B cells named regulatory B cells or Bregs has recently shown capacities to prevent or cure arthritis in mouse models. Bregs have also been identified in humans.
This phase I/II pilot trial seeks to demonstrate that prolonged administration of Campath-1H without prior marrow or stem cell harvesting can result in immunoablation similar to that achieved by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) from either bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell sources in children and adolescents with severe treatment refractory systemic sclerosis (SSc).
By including in this study patients with significant worsening of their lung volumes and / or their DLCO (carbon monoxide diffusing capacity) in the previous year, on the basis of an open retrospective study we recently conducted, we hope to demonstrate that a strategy combining prednisone and intravenous cyclophosphamide therapy is accompanied by an increase in the frequency stabilization / improvement of lung volumes and / or DLCO of patients at 12 months of 15% in the placebo and prednisone cyclophosphamide 50% in cyclophosphamide and prednisone.We also hope to demonstrate significant decrease in the number of patients excluded for failure in the CYC arm as compared to the placebo arm.
The aim is to find the presence of anti vitamin D antibodies in scleroderma patients and compare with control. A second goal is anti vitamin D levels in serum of scleroderma patients in relation to the clinical manifestations of the disease.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness and safety of the drug Gleevec (imatinib) as a new treatment for patients with active diffuse scleroderma. This drug has not been used previously to treat scleroderma, but it has been found to advance the treatment and life span of patients with a type of leukemia called chronic myeloid leukemia or CML. Gleevec acts on chemical signals in the cells that may decrease fibrosis (the hardening of the skin that occurs in scleroderma). It works by interfering in the process that activates many molecules that cause fibrosis, including TGFbeta (which may be a key part of disease activity in scleroderma). This study proposes to treat patients that have significant diffuse scleroderma with Gleevec for 6 months and investigate several measures of scleroderma disease activity before, during and at the end of treatment (0, 3 months and 6 months). This is a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trial: 20 patients will be divided into two groups in a 4:1 ratio, with 16 patients taking 400mg of Gleevec per day and 4 taking a placebo. The differences between the groups that will be measured include safety, Modified Rodnan skin score (mRSS), Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), global assessments (100mm VAS) and changes in biomarkers in blood and skin biopsies.
Scleroderma,also known as systemic sclerosis (SSc), is a multisystem disease affecting skin and other tissues including joints, muscles, lungs, the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys and tissue fibrosis is widespread. SSc presents special problems for developing therapies due to the heterogeneous clinical presentation, the variability of disease progression and the difficulty quantifying the extent of disease. For most disease manifestations, treatment is primarily symptomatic and generally inadequate. This study will utilize a 4-gene biomarker of skin disease as the primary efficacy outcome in a short duration, placebo-controlled clinical trial of rilonacept, designed to provide preliminary data for a larger trial. These gene biomarkers should provide a strong surrogate for such trials in the future and, if IL-1 is indeed the cytokine leading to fibrosis in this disease, provide a highly significant start to finding a therapeutic for SSc that for the first time might dramatically affect fibrosis. A central hypothesis of this study is that IL-1 inhibition will downregulate the 4-gene biomarker over a relatively short period of time, much shorter than is historically thought necessary to see changes in the MRSS, a skin score measurement tool. Entry criteria will include the recent onset of diffuse cutaneous SSc as this is the population most likely to show progressive skin disease and also the population examined in previous studies showing correlations between MRSS and the 4-gene biomarker. Secondary outcomes will include other validated measures of SSc disease activity. MRSS and SSc health assessment questionnaire (SHAQ), will be followed during the trial. This study will also test the effect of rilonacept on global skin gene expression using microarray analyses of skin biopsies. In addition, serum biomarkers of SSc disease activity (COMP, THS-1 and IFI44) and a biomarker of inflammasome activation (CRP) will be tested before and after treatment.
Organs of the gastrointestinal tract include the mouth, throat, stomach, intestines, and anus. Patients with scleroderma often have GIT disorders. GIT disorders can be severely debilitating and even life-threatening. Some problems associated with GIT disorders may include heartburn, loss of voice or hoarseness, ulcers (open sores), difficulty swallowing, constipation, diarrhea, malabsorption (impaired absorption of nutrients from the GI tract), diminished peristalsis (decreased in the wavelike motion in the muscles of the intestines), and the inability to control your bowel movements. Probiotics are the "good bacteria" normally found in your digestive tract. Our group is looking at whether or not taking daily probiotics (lactobacillus) can help alleviate some of these symptoms in scleroderma patients that have GIT disorders.