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A Sunny Day Can Mean All Sorts of Distress
(Published 6-19-06, New York Times) Summertime is not so easy for people living with certain autoimmune diseases. The sun, heat and even air-conditioning can intensify symptoms and cause problems that linger for months, if not years.For doctors who manage those diseases, primarily lupus, scleroderma and Raynaud's phenomenon, the challenges of educating their patients about sun avoidance become greater, too.

Covering the entire body, even in the heat, is critical for scleroderma patients because they have greater susceptibility to skin cancer. And since the blood vessels can also become sclerotic, or thickened, full coverage helps protect people from the shock of entering an air-conditioned environment. "The problem is that in the summer these patients go from dramatic warm to cold, and they can become very symptomatic from that," said Dr. Chris T. Derk, an assistant professor of medicine in the rheumatology division at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

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New York Times