In contrast, Tregs obtained from SSc patients all had a markedly diminished suppressive capacity compared to those from healthy donors (Figure 3a) with T regs from lSSc, edSSc and ldSSc suppressing CD4+ effector cell proliferation by, respectively, 28.2%±6.0 (P = 0.0001), 56.0%±8.5 (P = 0.006) and 18.3%±5.2 (P<0.0001). Here, CD4 is linked to systemic sclerosis.