VIDEO: ‘Early recognition is key’ in psoriatic arthritis

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Psoriasis is common, right? Relatively common. And we know that among patients with psoriasis, about one in five in a lifetime will develop psoriatic arthritis. People with nail disease, it's half. So this becomes a really important condition, especially for people with psoriasis to be aware of. You know, I think it's very important for dermatologists or anybody that cares for patients with psoriasis to have this in their mind as something that can occur and occur relatively frequently with underlying psoriasis. For patients, I think early recognition is important because the sooner we can address it, the easier it is in a lot of cases to treat. It's also important to know that, you know, when a left untreated, a substantial minority of patients with psoriatic arthritis will develop erosions, which is damage to the joints, and those erosions, once they occur, we can't really turn back the clock on it. And so really, early recognition is helpful to improve function, it helps to improve treatment outcomes, and it helps to reduce the risk for damage to the joint and disability as a result of that.

So, that early recognition is key, both among the general population for people to know that this exists, and to recognize that among providers, both primary care, rheumatologists, and dermatologists, people that are going to be caring for patients that have psoriasis need to know to recognize that a patient with psoriasis who's developing new onset of joint pain should be at least screened for psoriatic arthritis at the very least with a questionnaire, and a physical exam to determine if there's any findings that are concerning for psoriatic arthritis, and you know, to get those patients in to see a rheumatologist if there's concern for psoriatic arthritis so that they can be evaluated. We have great treatments now. We've got a ton of different treatments that are available, and so when we can find this early and get on it, very often, we can get these patients very well-controlled and minimize risk for disease progression over time.