The  goal of  this study  To assess if  high frequency ultrasound correlates with modified Rodnan skin score  and inflammatory markers and  if  it can differentiate between Systemic sclerosis and  healthy individuals and  if  HFU can detect subclinical skin thickening.  We recruited 30 consecutive patients with SSc and  40  controls  in this case control study. Skin thickness was measured by 20-22 MHz ultrasonic probe at 3 different skin sites bilaterally (at third proximal interphalyngeal, third  metacarpophalyngeal and wrist joints bilaterally). Total skin thickness (TST) by HFU and skin thickness using mRSS were recorded and compared to HFU.
The final results of our work show that total skin thickness  in patients with  SSc was higher than in healthy controls (P < 0.001), and correlated positively with total mRSS and correlated negatively with CRP. Patients with higher TST had  higher  mRSS . The area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve yielded sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 85% at the predicted probability of 1.4 mm as the optimal cut off  point to access  of  mean skin thickness.