The association between vibration and vascular injury in rheumatic diseases: A review of the literature

Abstract

Vascular manifestations can be seen early in the pathogenesis of inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Animal experiments, laboratory and clinical findings indicated that acute or long-term vibration exposure can induce vascular abnormalities. Recent years, in addition to Raynaud's phenomenon (RP), vibration as a risk factor for other rheumatic diseases has also received corresponding considered. This review is concentrated upon the role of vibration in the disease of systemic sclerosis (SSc). In this review, we are going to discuss the main mechanisms which are thought to be important in pathophysiology of vascular injury under the three broad headings of “vascular”, “neural” and “intravascular”. Aspects on the vibration and vascular inflammation are briefly discussed. And the epidemiological studies related to vibration studies in SSc and other rheumatic diseases are taken into account.

• Epidemiology
• inflammation
• rheumatic diseases
• vasculopathy
• vibration

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

This work was partly supported by the grants from the Academic Leader Foundation of Anhui Medical University, the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province in 2013 (Code: 1308085MH169) and the Key Project of the Education Department of Anhui Province Natural Science Research (Code: KJ2012A165).