TY - JOUR T1 - A controlled trial of antihypertensive therapy in systemic sclerosis (scleroderma). JF - Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases JO - Ann Rheum Dis SP - 407 LP - 410 DO - 10.1136/ard.43.3.407 VL - 43 IS - 3 AU - J F Fries AU - C Wasner AU - J Brown AU - P Feigenbaum Y1 - 1984/06/01 UR - http://ard.bmj.com/content/43/3/407.abstract N2 - Antihypertensive treatment may be life saving in scleroderma renal crisis. Patients surviving such crises frequently have had dramatic improvement in the dermal manifestations of their scleroderma. To investigate the potential role of antihypertensive treatment in nonhypertensive patients we randomly assigned 28 patients with systemic sclerosis into drug (14) and placebo (14) groups, using blocked randomisation , and followed them up in a prospective, double-blind clinical trial for 24 months. Overall, both groups improved slightly, with both subjective and objective markers. There were no statistically significant differences and no clinically meaningful trends between the 2 groups, except that the blood pressure was reduced in the group on the active drug. ER -