Scleroderma

While many foods taste great, they are also powerful healers in a vibrant multicolor disguise. The best healing remedies also taste fabulous (I can’t say that about any prescription medications). Plus, foods won’t cause the nasty common side effects that most drugs cause.

1. Cherries
Muraleedharan Nair, PhD, professor of natural products and chemistry at Michigan State University, found that tart cherry extract is ten times more

Research shows that a holistic lifestyle is beneficial to those with autoimmune disease. But let’s be honest: it can be difficult for anyone to keep up a perfectly balanced lifestyle — let alone someone with an autoimmune disease. It’s great to take steps to find more balance in your life, but sometimes you need to compromise — and that’s okay! Try using one of these three trade-offs that will help you to compensate when you can’t balance it all.

Stressed? Get your nutrition together!

Investigators, partially supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, have found that a deficiency in the protein caveolin-1 (cav-1) is linked to the development of interstitial lung disease, the scarring of lung tissue that causes disability and death in people with Scleroderma. The scientists, from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, also showed that a special peptide called caveolin scaffolding domain (CSD) inhibits progression of the disease in mice. The study was reported in Fibrogenesis & Tissue Repair.

Scleroderma is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissue. The systemic form of the disease, known as systemic sclerosis, is characterized by hardening and scarring that can seriously affect both skin and internal organs. Scarring, also known as fibrosis, is caused by overproduction of the protein collagen, not only by fibroblasts—a common cell found in connective tissue—but also by fibrocytes, cells that come from monocytes and originate in the blood. Fibrocytes express a protein called CXCR4, which helps fibrocytes migrate from the blood to lung tissue, where they contribute to lung fibrosis.

Every day, your immune system protects you by attacking invaders such as bacteria and viruses. But when something goes awry with the body's immune system, immune cells may attack and damage tissues they were designed to protect, resulting in an autoimmune disease. Either the immune system mistakenly identifies healthy tissue as an invader and attacks it, or the immune system is unable to regulate its response.

About 8 percent of the U.S. population (three-quarters of this group are women

Toshiyuki Yamamoto and Ichiro Katayama
Department of Dermatology, Fukushima Medical University, Hikarigaoka 1, Fukushima 960-1295, Japan
Department of Dermatology, Osaka University, Yamadaoka 2-2, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Received 6 June 2011; Revised 17 August 2011; Accepted 17 August 2011

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a connective tissue disease which shows fibrosis of the skin and various internal organs. Although the pathogenesis of SSc has not been fully elucidated yet, it is characterized by vascular injury, immunological abnormalities, and excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins in the skin and various internal organs. In particular, systemic vasculopathy plays a fundamental role in SSc and is associated with various altered vascular dysfunctions in the lung, kidney, heart, and skin.

Clinically, Raynaud’s phenomenon, digital ulcers, and abnormal nailfold capillaries are seen in association with peripheral vasculopathy. Raynaud’s phenomenon is caused by vasospasm, commonly seen in patients prior to the onset of sclerodactyly. Endothelial cells have been reported to play an important role in the initial inflammatory as well as subsequent fibrotic process. Histological analysis of the initial stage of scleroderma reveals perivascular infiltrates of mononuclear cells in the dermis, which is associated with increased collagen synthesis in the surrounding fibroblasts.