Psoriatic arthritis assessment and treatment update.

PURPOSE

To review the current state of knowledge about assessment and management of psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

RECENT FINDINGS

Partly stimulated by expanded research on PsA disease state, assessment and treatment, there has been significant collaborative effort by groups of rheumatologists and dermatologists regarding development of screening questionnaires and biomarkers for the identification of PsA, assessing the severity and activity of key clinical domains (joints, enthesium, dactylitis, spine, and skin and nails), and coming to consensus on optimal treatment recommendations for these clinical domains based on evidence-based reviews of treatment. A number of emerging treatments, predominantly biologics, have shown substantial efficacy and reasonable safety profiles in the treatment of multiple clinical domains of PsA, thus providing the option of either monotherapy or combination therapy approaches to disease treatment.

SUMMARY

Increasingly, PsA is being recognized as a distinct disease entity worthy of research regarding reliable assessment and focus on the development of effective and well tolerated therapies. Therapeutic breakthroughs are providing multiple options for therapy, which yield improvement of clinical signs and symptoms, inhibition of structural damage, and improvement of function and quality of life.