Cancer cells
SAN DIEGO—New insights into how scleroderma and myositis may be linked with cancer have led to intriguing questions that could impact patient care, experts said at the 2017 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in November.
Understanding the relationship between cancer and rheumatic diseases is important because rheumatologists are seeing more and more patients with both diseases, and treating both conditions at the same time poses a challenge, said Ami Shah, MD, MHS, director of clinical and translational research at the Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center in Baltimore.
Researchers have found that scleroderma patients with anti-RNA polymerase-3 (POL3) or anti-RNPC-3 antibodies, and myositis patients with TIF1-gamma or NXP-2 antibodies, are more likely to develop cancer right around the time of the onset of their rheumatic disease. And evidence has emerged that naturally occurring anti-tumor immune responses directed at altered autoantigens in cancers may spread, possibly giving rise to these autoimmune disorders.