capillaroscopy as an outcome measure for clinical trials on the peripheral vasculopathy in ssc—is it usefulcapillaroscopy作为临床试验的测量结果在外围血管病变ssc它有用.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Rheumatology Volume 2010, Article ID 784947, 6 pages doi:10.1155/2010/784947 Review Article Capillaroscopy as an Outcome Measure for Clinical Trials on the Peripheral Vasculopathy in SSc—Is It Useful? Maurizio Cutolo,1 Alberto Sulli,1 Carmen Pizzorni,1 and Vanessa Smith2 1 Research Laboratory and Academic Unit of Clinical Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Genova, Viale Benedetto XV, 6, 16132 Genova, Italy 2 Department of Rheumatology, Ghent University Hospital, 9000 Ghent, Belgium Correspondence should be addressed to Maurizio Cutolo, mcutolo@unige.it Received 15 May 2010; Accepted 6 July 2010 Academic Editor: Lorinda Chung Copyright © 2010 Maurizio Cutolo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Peripheral microvascular impairment in systemic sclerosis (SSc) may be easily detected and scored in a safe noninvasive way by nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC). The paper highlights clinical conditions related to SSc in which NVC may represent an outcome measure of therapeutical interventions, by elaborating on their already assessed relationship with the NVC patterns and eventually scores. The 3 important biological/clinical conditions are: the positivity for SSc-specific serum autoantibodies, the presence of SSc skin digital ulcers (DUs) and of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) SSc associated. In conclusion, to the question if capillaroscopy (NVC) may represent in SSc an outcome measure for clinical trials on the peripheral vasculopathy, based on the growing evidence and our detailed stud