The causes of scleredema neonatorum include many factors, the commonly-seen ones being weak physique and attack by pathogenic cold. A few cases are due to affection by warm and heat pathogens. Congenital insufficiency of premature and weak infants causes deficiency of yang qi, giving rise to the disease as the endogenous cause; improper nursing and heat preservation after birth make pathogenic cold attack viscera, bringing about the disease as the exogenous cause.

According to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, there are some patterns of syndrome that lead to scleredema neonatorum.
1. Deficiency of yang qi  
2. Unsmooth blood circulation due to cold accumulation 
3. Stagnation of heat and toxin