Abstract
Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a complex rare autoimmune disease with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. Currently, interstitial lung disease (ILD) and cardiac involvement (including pulmonary arterial hypertension) are recognized as the leading causes of SSc-associated mortality. New molecular targets have been discovered and phase II and phase III clinical trials published in the last 5 years on SSc-ILD will be discussed in this review. Details on the study design; the drug tested and its dose; the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study; the concomitant immunosuppression; the outcomes and the duration of the study were reviewed. The two most common drugs used for the treatment of SSc-ILD are cyclophosphamide and mycophenolate mofetil, both supported by randomized controlled trials. Additional drugs, such as nintedanib and tocilizumab, have been approved to slow pulmonary function decline in SSc-ILD. In this review, we discuss the therapeutic alternatives for SSc management, offering the option to customize the design of future studies to stratify SSc patients and provide a patient-specific treatment according to the new emerging pathogenic features of SSc-ILD.
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
2-21-2022
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines10020504
Funding Information
This research received no external funding.
Repository Citation
Aragona, Caterina Oriana; Versace, Antonio Giovanni; Ioppolo, Carmelo; La Rosa, Daniela; Lauro, Rita; Tringali, Maria Concetta; Tomeo, Simona; Ferlazzo, Guido; Roberts, William Neal; Bitto, Alessandra; Irrera, Natasha; and Bagnato, Gianluca, "Emerging Evidence and Treatment Perspectives from Randomized Clinical Trials in Systemic Sclerosis: Focus on Interstitial Lung Disease" (2022). Internal Medicine Faculty Publications. 284.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/internalmedicine_facpub/284
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Biomedicines, v. 10, issue 2, 504.
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).