Systemic sclerosis

Systemic sclerosis is a complex orphan disease affecting the immune system and various organ systems throughout the body, including the lung, heart, kidneys, liver, and gastrointestinal tract. It is characterized by skin fibrosis, vasculopathy, and peripheral nerve damage. Common symptoms include Raynaud's phenomenon and fatigue, which are two non-specific symptoms common in autoimmune diseases. Some patients with systemic sclerosis also develop interstitial lung disease. Patients with systemic sclerosis frequently display overlapping symptoms with other autoimmune diseases, such as myositis or rheumatoid arthritis (Volkmann ER et al. (2023)). As with other autoimmune diseases, systemic sclerosis disproportionally affects women, with significantly higher prevalence (up to three times) in females compared to males (Peoples C et al. (2016)).

Differential abundance and machine learning analysis

This section presents the disease-specific results of the differential abundance and machine learning analyses. The analyses are reported for three comparisons: 1) disease vs. all other diseases, 2) disease vs. diseases from the same class, and 3) disease vs. healthy samples.

Disease vs All other
Disease vs Class
Disease vs Healthy