What have multicentre registries across the world taught us about the disease features of systemic sclerosis

IntroductionThe aim of this study is to compare the clinical features, mortality and causes of death of systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients in four large multicentre registries.MethodsPatients seen at least once in the Australian Scleroderma Cohort Study (ASCS) (n = 1714), the Canadian Scleroderma Research Group (CSRG) (n = 1628), the European League Against Rheumatism Scleroderma Trials and Research (EUSTAR) Network (n = 13,996) and the Systemic Sclerosis Cohort in Singapore (SCORE) (n = 500) before August 2016 were included. Clinical manifestations and survival in cohorts and disease subtypes were compared.ResultsAmong 17,838 SSc patients, most were female (86.1%), Caucasian (84.6%) and had the limited cutaneous subtype (lcSSc) (65.0%). The anti-centromere autoantibody was the most prevalent (37.6%). More patients in SCORE had the diffuse subtype (dcSSc) (49.3%) and Scl-70 autoantibody (38.8%) (p<0.001). Patients with dcSSc were more likely to be younger and male (p<0.001) and have shorter disease duratio...