Raynaud's

Great! It is likely that you are one of the many people who have Raynaud's without a clear explanation, and who have no other associated rheumatic disease, such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or scleroderma. Raynaud's is quite common, affecting up to ten percent of the population (especially women) and 90 percent of the time it occurs without these other diseases.

However, with severe pain, numbness, color change, wounds that are slow to heal, infections,  scarring , or if new symptoms, including those mentioned earlier, develop over time, it is important to be evaluated by your physician.

The questions asked earlier are meant to assess the possibility that your Raynaud's is due to an underlying rheumatic disease, such as

• systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, or just "lupus"), a condition in which there is often joint pain, a rash and/or pain with breathing
• Sjogren's syndrome -- a disease marked by dry eyes and mouth and joint pain
• scleroderm and CREST syndrome -- a condition in which there is usually some combination of skin thickening over the fingers, heartburn, and breathing problems
• an "overlap" syndrome, in which there are features of several different disorders present at the same time.

Doctors often order antibody tests, called the antinuclear antibody (ANA) and rheumatoid factor (RF), because these antibodies are associated with the conditions above. However, they don't usually help much if there are no other symptoms as in your case.

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Online Medical Reviewer: Faculty of Harvard Medical School Date Last Reviewed: 5/31/2006 Date Last Modified: 5/25/2006 Source: from Harvard Health Decision Guides, Harvard Health Publications, Copyright © 2007 by President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Used with permission of StayWell.

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