Botulinum Toxin for Refractory Digital Ischemia and Ulcers in Systemic Sclerosis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Importance: Acute digital ischemia, digital ulcers, and gangrene are debilitating complications of systemic sclerosis and other vasculopathies and are often refractory to standard vasodilator and immunosuppressive therapies. Botulinum toxin (BTX) has emerged as a potential rescue therapy, but its clinical effectiveness and safety remain unclear. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of BTX injections for ischemic digital complications and identify predictors of treatment response using individual participant data (IPD). Data Sources: MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase (Ovid), and Scopus were searched from inception through April 20, 2024. Study Selection: Eligible studies included patients who presented with acute digital ischemia, ischemic digital ulcers, or gangrene. Studies were limited to Raynaud disease without digital ulcers or gangrene were excluded. Two reviewers independently screened articles using Covidence, with discrepancies resolved by consensus with the senior author. Of 116 studies screened, 31 (27%) met inclusion criteria. Data Extraction and Synthesis: Data were extracted in duplicate and study quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute checklist. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize baseline characteristics, treatment regimens, and outcomes. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was complete response (CR), which was defined as resolution of ischemia or ulcer healing. Secondary outcomes included adverse events and time to response. Cox regression was used to identify factors associated with CR. Results: This systematic review and IPD meta-analysis included 119 patients (72 female individuals [75.0%]; mean [SD] age, 49.0 [15.1] years). BTX was associated with high CR rates for ischemia (93.1%), ulcers (90.1%), and gangrene (87.5%). Adverse events were infrequent, with transient muscle weakness (7.6%) and injection site pain (5.9%) being most common. No associated factors reached statistical significance in multivariable models, but autoimmune etiology and younger age were associated with faster response in Kaplan-Meier analyses. Conclusions and Relevance: The results of this systematic review and IPD meta-analysis suggest that BTX injections appear to be a safe and effective adjunct for refractory digital ischemia in systemic sclerosis. Prospective trials are needed to confirm long-term effectiveness and standardize administration protocols.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".