Psoratic Arthritis - Causes and Treatment
If you’ve just been told you have psoratic arthritis, you maybe looking for a bit of background information and wondering what the options for your treatment. Here is an overview of the condition and ways of managing it.
What is Psoratic Arthritis?
This condition causes swelling and inflammation of joints and it is accompanied by symptoms of the skin condition psoriasis. In the majority of patients the psoriasis is present first, but in others there is a history of arthritis prior to psoriasis. Any joint in the body can be affected but is common to see involvement of the back/spine and also the hands and feet.
Symptoms
Symptoms include a combination of joint and skin symptoms. Joints can be painful and stiff. In some patients a ‘sausage-shaped’ swelling of the ends of the feet and toes can occur called dactylitis.
Pitting and discoloration of the nails can occur and in extreme cases nails can be lost. Skin lesions typical of psoriasis can be found either widespread over the body or localized to a very small area.
Causes
The exact causes of the disease are not known. One theory is that a specific genetic makeup makes people more susceptible to the disease following infection.
How Widespread is it?
A surprisingly high percentage of the population has psoriasis- about 2%, that’s one in every 50 people. Of these, about 5-7% will have psoriatic arthritis.
Treatment
There are a number of treatments available. Drug therapy is largely aimed at reducing the inflammation of the joints. This can involve the use of NSAIDs or steroidal drugs. As well as treating the inflammation, these drugs also have a pain killing effect. Disease modifying drugs may also be offered to sufferers of psoratic arthritis. These take longer to have an effect (several weeks) but can sometimes help patients who have not responded well to NSAIDs.
There are numerous treatments available for the treatment of psoriasis including the use of emollient creams, cold-tar based preparations and vitamin D like treatment such as calcipotriol.