Plasma D-dimer concentration in patients with systemic sclerosis.
BACKGROUND
Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disorder of the connective tissue characterized by widespread vascular lesions and fibrosis. Little is known so far on the activation of the hemostatic and fibrinolytic systems in SSc, and most preliminary evidences are discordant.


METHODS
To verify whether SSc patients might display a prothrombotic condition, plasma D-dimer was assessed in 28 consecutive SSc patients and in 33 control subjects, matched for age, sex and environmental habit.


CONCLUSIONS
When compared to healthy controls, geometric mean and 95% confidence interval (IC95%) of plasma D-dimer were significantly increased in SSc patients (362 ng/mL, IC 95%: 361-363 ng/mL vs 229 ng/mL, IC95%: 228-231 ng/mL, p = 0.005). After stratifying SSc patients according to disease subset, no significant differences were observed between those with limited cutaneous pattern and controls, whereas patients with diffuse cutaneous pattern displayed substantially increased values. No correlation was found between plasma D-dimer concentration and age, sex, autoantibody pattern, serum creatinine, erythrosedimentation rate, nailfold videocapillaroscopic pattern and pulmonary involvement.


CONCLUSIONS
We demonstrated that SSc patients with diffuse subset are characterized by increased plasma D-dimer values, reflecting a potential activation of both the hemostatic and fibrinolytic cascades, which might finally predispose these patients to thrombotic complications.
Lippi
Giuseppe
G
Istituto di Chimica e Microscopia Clinica, Dipartimento di Scienze Morfologico-Biomediche, Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italy. ulippi@tin.it
Volpe
Alessandro
A
Caramaschi
Paola
P
Salvagno
Gian Luca
GL
Montagnana
Martina
M
Guidi
Gian Cesare
GC