Your rings barely fit your fingers anymore. Your fingers have puffed up and they change color in the cold, more so than usual. And to top it off, you’ve got bad heartburn that keeps you from eating much of anything lately.
That mix of symptoms can occur with systemic sclerosis, commonly known as scleroderma. Scleroderma is a group of rare autoimmune diseases that result from overproduction of collagen — a fibrous type of protein in the body’s connective tissues. Classic symptoms of scleroderma are hardening and tightening of the skin. But the systemic form can have effects far beyond the skin, including in several internal organs.
“Thankfully, not every person with systemic sclerosis will develop the disease in every organ or will experience every symptom,” says Alicia Hinze, M.D., M.H.S., a rheumatologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Hinze is co-director of the Scleroderma Clinic at Mayo Clinic, and she notes that the disease often can be managed effectively with regular monitoring, lifestyle changes and medications.
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