Abstract #2508

2-phase Dixon technique to assay dermal white adipose tissue loss as potential early diagnostic biomarker of scleroderma using genetic Fra-2 mice

Nicola Bertolino¹, Roberta Goncalves Marangoni², Daniele Procissi¹, Cynthia Yang¹, Sol Misener¹, Warren G Tourtellotte³, and John Varga²

¹Radiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States, ²Division of Rheumatology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States, ³Pathology, Neurology, Neurosurgery and Regenerative Medicine, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease leading to fibrosis resulting in stiff skin, formation of ulcers, joint contractures and ultimately functional incapacity. Loss of dermal white adipose tissue (dWAT) was observed ex-vivo prior to the development of fibrosis. In this study we demostrated the feasibility of employing CSE MRI Dixon technique to detect and quantify in-vivo dWAT thickness using a genetic Fra-2 fibrosis mice model. The proposed non-invasive diagnostic method to evaluate or predict skin fibrosis would greatly improve clinicians’ ability to track progression and response to treatment and also provide a tool to investigate pathogenesis in animal models.

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