Objectives: While important progress was made regarding the treatment of systemic sclerosis (SSc), there is still no evidence-based disease-modifying treatment available for SSc-related gastrointestinal (GI) manifestations. We aimed to identify an association between immunosuppressive therapy and the the severity of GI symptoms, measured by the University of California at Los Angeles/Scleroderma Clinical Trial Consortium Gastro-Intestinal Tract instrument 2.0 (GIT)., Methods: We selected patients with SSc who had at least two visits (further referred to as 'baseline' and 'follow-up') with completed GITs, within an interval of 12±3 months. The study outcome was the GIT score at follow-up. We used multivariable linear regression with the following covariates: immunosuppressive therapy during observation, immunosuppressive therapy before baseline, baseline GIT and several baseline parameters selected by clinical judgement as potentially influencing GI symptoms., Results: We included 209 SSc patients (82.3% female, median age 59.0 years, median disease duration 6.0 years, 40 (19.1%) diffuse cutaneous SSc, median baseline GIT 0.19). Of these, 71 were exposed to immunosuppressive therapy during the observation period, and, compared with unexposed patients, had overall more severe SSc and a higher prevalence of treatment with proton pump inhibitors. In multivariable linear regression, immunosuppressive therapy during the period of observation and lower baseline GIT scores were significantly associated with lower (better) GIT scores at follow-up., Conclusion: Immunosuppressive treatment was associated with lower GIT scores in our cohort, which suggests the potential effects of immunosuppressants on GI manifestations in patients with SSc, requiring confirmation in prospective randomised clinical trials., Competing Interests: Competing interests: MB has received consultancy fees from GSK, Amgen, Novartis and Vifor. CB has received consultancy fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, grants/research support from Gruppo Italiano Lotta alla Sclerodermia (GILS), European Scleroderma Trials and Research Group (EUSTAR), Foundation for research in Rheumatology (FOREUM), Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium (SCTC), Scleroderma Research Foundation (SRF), EMDO foundation. Educational grants from AbbVie and Wellcome Trust, and congress support from Boehringer Ingelheim. RD has received speaker and/or consultancy fees from Actelion, Boehringer-Ingelheim; grant/research support from: Pfizer, Actelion, Iten-Kohaut; and congress participation support from Amgen and Otsuka. She also received the Walter and Sigrid Siegenthaler Fellowship. ME has received congress support from Janssen and Astra-Zeneca and research support from Novartis outside of the submitted work. She also received the Walter and Sigrid Siegenthaler Fellowship. SI has received a EULAR scientific long-term training grant for young fellows. OD has/had consultancy relationship with and/or has received research funding from and/or has served as a speaker for the following companies in the area of potential treatments for systemic sclerosis and its complications in the last three calendar years: 4P-Pharma, Abbvie, Acceleron, Alcimed, Altavant, Amgen, AnaMar, Argenx, Arxx, AstraZeneca, Blade, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cantargia AB, Corbus, CSL Behring, Galderma, Galapagos, Glenmark, Gossamer, Horizon, Janssen, Kymera, Lupin, Medscape, Merck, Miltenyi Biotec, Mitsubishi Tanabe, Nkarta Inc., Novartis, Orion, Prometheus, Redxpharma, Roivant, EMD Serono, Topadur and UCB. Patent issued 'mir-29 for the treatment of systemic sclerosis' (US8247389, EP2331143). Cofounder of CITUS AG. CM received speaker and/or consultancy fees from Janssen-Cilag AG, Boehringer Ingelheim, MED Talks Switzerland, Medbase, Mepha, Novartis and PlayToKnow AG and travel support for congress from Boehringer Ingelheim., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)