“…As far as rheumatic arthritis is concerned, the aggregation with psoriatic arthritis and the small number of patients (eleven) may explain the lack of any relationships with both inflammatory markers and echocardiographic parameters, which is in discordance with the observations made in other studies [32,33]. On the other hand, even if in systemic sclerosis the pathogenic process targets not only the skin but also internal organs, it is a multistep process which involves sequentially or concomitantly different mechanisms such as fibrosis, vascular dysfunction, activation of the immune system and inflammation.…”