[Ultrastructure of the skin in systemic scleroderma]

Biopsy specimens of the skin of the back of the forearm and hand in 20 patients with systemic scleroderma were studied using histological and electron microscopy methods. There were revealed evidences of intensified neofibrillogenesis, changes in collagen structures of the derma (destruction and defects of packing of collagenous fibrills, variability of their thickness in a fibre) and in the microcirculatory bed. In 18 out of 20 cases the nuclei of the connective-tissue cells and cells of the basal layer of the epidermis contained the so-called nuclear bodies, which are considered by a number of authors as an indirect evidence of a viral infection. The process of an intensified neoformation of collagen fibrils considerably predominated over destructive processes in collagen structures.