Psoriatic arthritis treatment: “We’re not doing so well”

MAUI, HAWAII – Two recent Scandinavian studies highlight the considerable room for improvement that exists in psoriatic arthritis outcomes, according to speakers at the 2018 Rheumatology Winter Clinical Symposium.

“We’re not doing so well. I think that in general, if you think of the treatments that we have and the treat-to-target approach, psoriatic arthritis lags behind rheumatoid arthritis, maybe by a decade,” declared Arthur Kavanaugh, MD, program director for the symposium and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

^{Bruce Jancin/Frontline Medical News}

Dr. Arthur Kavanaugh

“If you say that MDA is remission, a 23% remission rate is not good enough. And there are some people who are not on treatment. So I think we’re still seeing a lag in psoriatic arthritis. We’re not treating it as aggressively as we are rheumatoid arthritis,” said Dr. Kavanaugh, director of the Center for Innovative Therapy in the university’s division of rheumatology, allergy, and immunology.