Micronutrients, their potential effect on patients with systemic sclerosis

Abstract

Over the past years, several evidences have supported an important role of specific micronutrients, including vitamin A, vitamin D and vitamin E in immune dysfunction, vascular involvement and fibrotic changes involved in systemic sclerosis (SSc) development. In PubMed, eight clinical trials about the therapy of micronutrients on SSc patients were searched out using medical subject headings terms (SSc: “scleroderma, localized”, “scleroderma, systemic”, “scleroderma, diffuse” and “scleroderma, limited”; vitamins “vitamin A”, “thiamin”, “riboflavin”, “niacin”, “pantothenic acid”, “vitamin B 6”, “biotin”, “folic acid”, “vitamin B 12”, “inositol”, “choline”, “ascorbic acid”, “vitamin D”, “vitamin E”, “tocopherols”, “vitamin K” and “vitamin P”; and minerals: “calcium”, “magnesium”, “potassium”, “sodium”, “phosphorus”, “sulfur”, “chlorine”, “iron”, “copper”, “iodine”, “zinc”, “selenium”, “manganese”, “molybdenum”, “cobalt”, “chromium”, “tin”, “vanadium”, “silicon”, “nickel” and “fluorine”). This brief review will summarize current understanding on that for the further prospect of future studies. Though the clinical trials for the treatment of SSc with micronutrients are still in their infancy, more researches are needed to substantiate the current results and accelerate the knowledge in this field.

Keywords:

• Clinical trials
• Micronutrient
• Systemic sclerosis
• Therapy
• Vitamin

Acknowledgements

First of all, high tribute shall be paid to my master tutor, Jing Wang, for her instructive advice and useful suggestions on my thesis. I am deeply grateful of her help in the completion of this thesis. I am greatly indebted to Wen-jia Peng and Jun-Wei Yan for assistance with the article and to Bing-Xaing Wang for valuable discussion. Besides, special thanks should go to Jun-Qing Zhang and Chang-Chun Xiao who have put considerable time and effort into their comments on the draft. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents for their continuous support and encouragement.

Funding

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

Conflict of interest

None.