We want to establish the relationship between the presence of specific autoantibodies for scleroderma (anti-centromere, anti-topoisomerase 1, anti-polymerase III, anti-U3 RNP, Anti-Th/To, Anti-Pm/Scl, anti-Ku) with the different demographic and clinical features as well as with the disease prognosis.

This study, carried out along with researchers from the Hospital del Mar and from the "Institut Municipal d'Investigació Mèdica", aims at correlating the expression of SLRPs and MMP-13 with the severity of cutaneous involvement, hand dysfunctional capacity, capillaroscopy patterns, and cutaneous ultrasonography of patients affected with diffuse scleroderma in different evolutive stages of the disease.

With this study we aim at studying the genetic background of the disease to deepen in its pathogenesis to be able to establish links between genetic variations and different clinic-biologic patterns. This research is based on a multicentric study and it is led by Prof. Javier Martín from the "Instituto López-Neyra" of Parasitology, CSIC (Granada). We contribute to it by sending samples from our cohort of patients along with the clinical data.