MJA
MJA

Systemic sclerosis: new hope for an unyielding disease

Helen J Englert and Nicholas Manolios
Med J Aust 2009; 191 (7): . || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02839.x
Published online: 5 October 2009

There is still no cure, but what advances have been made in managing this disabling condition?

In its more aggravated forms diffuse scleroderma is one of the most terrible of all human ills. Like Tithonus [a Greek mythological hero who was granted immortality but not eternal youth] to “wither slowly” and like him to be “beaten down and marred and wasted” until one is literally a mummy, encased in an evershrinking, slowly contracting skin of steel, is a fate not pictured in any tragedy, ancient or modern.

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