Systemic sclerosis & Raynaud's
Soluble CD13 in systemic sclerosis: clinical observations and transcriptomic insights from peripheral blood
Authors' conclusion
Our results demonstrate that circulating sCD13 reflects dynamic disease activity rather than static severity in SSc.
Study context
- Population
- Systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients and healthy controls, University of Michigan Scleroderma Programthree patient cohorts
- Exposure
- SSc patients vs healthy controls
- Outcome
- Plasma sCD13 levels (ELISA) and associations with clinical features of SSc
Methodological detailsthree independent patient cohorts, public transcriptomic datasets, single-cell data
- Three independent patient cohorts
- Public transcriptomic datasets
- Single-cell data
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Plasma sCD13 levels
- Plasma Soluble CD13 (sCD13) significantly elevated in SSc vs healthy controls
- No association with vascular complications or baseline skin severity (mRSS), ILD, pulmonary function or autoantibody profiles
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Early-stage SSc: baseline sCD13 vs improvement in skin fibrosis · one year
- Higher baseline sCD13 predicted greater improvement in skin fibrosis (r)
- −0.42, p = 0.001
Early-stage SSc: longitudinal decline in sCD13 vs changes in DLCO%
- Correlation (r)
- 0.53, p = 0.04
Transcriptomic analysis of SSc blood
- Upregulation of ANPEP (CD13), MMP14 and F2RL3 (PAR4); strong positive correlations of ANPEP with MMP14 and F2RL3
- ANPEP and MMP14 expression correlated with TGFB1 and IL6
- Single-cell: ANPEP and MMP14 expression localized to myeloid cells, particularly CD14⁺ and CD16⁺ monocytes and dendritic cells
Original publication
Soluble CD13 in systemic sclerosis: clinical observations and transcriptomic insights from peripheral blood. Arthritis Res Ther. Published 10 January 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →