A study in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine found in most patients, a low dose of the hormone relaxin softened and loosened skin scarred and hardened by the poorly understood disease. The 68-patient study is the first in which patients getting a drug improved more than a comparison group getting a placebo, lead researcher Dr. James R. Seibold said. Scleroderma can make fingers and other joints inflexible, leaving patients unable to eat, groom themselves or do other basic tasks unassisted. Often, it hardens internal organs, the esophagus, gastrointestinal tract and blood vessels, making it difficult for the body to breathe, deliver oxygen to tissues, clear out toxins, or swallow or absorb food. Sometimes, it kills quickly.
Current treatments can only relieve some symptoms.
Unlike relaxin, many of those have nasty side effects. Dr. E. Carwil LeRoy, professor and chairman of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina, said relaxin has a good track record of inhibiting collagen formation in test tube and animal experiments and appears to reverse damage to skin. But he said more research is needed, particularly to see whether it can stop or reverse the internal damage some patients suffer. In the study, groups of patients received a low dose of relaxin, a dose four times higher, or a benign, sterile solution. After six months, patients getting the placebo and the high dose fared about the same, with a few getting worse and nearly half showing no improvement.