Nailfold Microvascular Capillaroscopic Changes and Serum KL-6 Pneumoprotein in Systemic Sclerosis Associated Interstitial Lung Diseases

Background: In order to determine how well nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC) measures the severity of interstitial lung disease (ILD) in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc), this study set out to explain the correlation between NVC results and serum Krebs von den Lungen (KL-6) biomarker levels.Methods: Fifty patients with systemic sclerosis participated in this cross-sectional analytical study. The NVC characteristics considered in this study were capillary density (CD), capillary dimension, hemorrhages, and capillary morphology. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits were used to measure serum KL-6 levels.Results: The serum KL-6 level was significantly correlated with decreased CD and aberrant capillary morphology (r = -0.919; P < 0.01). Serum KL-6 level was moderately connected with capillaroscopic scleroderma pattern (r = 0.400; P =0.004), and the presence of megacapillaries was marginally correlated with serum KL-6 level (r = -0.294; P = 0.034). A significant correlation between the presence of bleeding and serum KL-6 levels was not seen (r = -0.039; P < 0.788).Conclusions: The study's findings suggest that NVC has promise as a method for SSc patients to gauge the severity of their ILD. There was a robust correlation between CD, aberrant capillary morphology, and serum KL-6 levels. Based on these findings, NVC may be useful in SSc patients as a primary or adjunctive lung involvement metric. To confirm these results, larger-scale longitudinal studies are still required.