sclero-smart™ is a breakthrough blood test that measures the levels of an autoantibody called anti-vinculin, recently found to be commonly elevated in patients who have systemic sclerosis and scleroderma (SSc).
Read the paper published by Clinical Rheumatology here.
Scleroderma can severely affect the GI tract, with symptoms including intestinal dysmotility, vomiting, bloating, anorexia, severe abdominal pain, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and severe malnutrition.
Scleroderma subjects with elevated anti-vinculin levels have been shown to experience greater gastrointestinal (GI) symptom severity.
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is high blood pressure in the blood vessels of the lungs. Patients with scleroderma are at increased risk for developing PH from several mechanisms.
Elevated levels of anti-vinculin in scleroderma patients are also associated with pulmonary hypertension.
In research published by the Clinical Rheumatology, anti-vinculin was shown to be more commonly elevated in SSc patients than in healthy controls.
Read the paper here.
The measurement of anti-vinculin can be an important test to help rheumatologists identify the risk of gastrointestinal or vascular complications in scleroderma patients.
sclero-smart™ is the only commercially available test that measures anti-vinculin to aid in the diagnosis of scleroderma. The test has been developed through a partnership with the Medically Associated Science and Technology program at Cedars-Sinai.