Early psoriatic arthritis: facing the challenge.

NMUH Staff Publications

22

<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Early diagnosis and initiation of therapy has become a primary objective in clinical rheumatology. As psoriatic arthritis causes deformities and joint damage leading to impaired quality of life and function as well as increased mortality risk, there was an urgent call for action aiming at inducing remission of the active inflammatory process. Until the year 2000 there were no treatments that led to a reduction in progression of joint damage. However, with the advent of anti-tumour necrosis factor agents, it is now possible to arrest the progression of damage in these patients. Therefore, the concept of window of opportunity, that is early assessment and management in specialist clinics, has been extended to psoriatic arthritis with successful outcomes among psoriatic arthritis patients similar to those with rheumatoid arthritis. Although all this sounds plausible, early psoriatic arthritis assessment remains limited to research as setting up this type of service in standard clinical practice faces several challenges that would need tackling. The objective of this article is to provide an overview of these challenges and suggest a paradigm for use in standard clinical practice to identify early psoriatic arthritis patients.</span>