Besides cartilage, the effect of lignin on the downregulation of COL1A2 may also be important in the regulation of other fibrotic diseases where the expression of type I collagen is increased such as in pulmonary, liver, and bone marrow fibrosis and scleroderma [49] or in tumor invasion and progression [50,51,52]. This evidence concerns the gene COL1A2 and scleroderma.