Photo Credit: Jacques Hugo

Even in early disease stages, patients with PsA already have greater multimorbidity and cardiovascular burden than sex- and age-matched controls, according to study findings published in Arthritis Care & Research. The study compared 67 treatment-naive patients with early PsA and 61 volunteers without PsA. Odds ratios were 1.9 for having 2 or more comorbidities and 2.1 for having multiple cardiovascular risk factors for patients with early PsA. Neither comorbidities nor cardiovascular risk factors were influenced by the duration of skin psoriasis. The most common comorbidity among patients was dyslipidemia, which affected nearly two-thirds. Patients tended to have an above-normal BMI, and 40.3% had obesity compared with 18.3% of controls. At a 1-year follow-up, disease activity scores improved but the proportion of patients with comorbidities and cardiovascular risk factors stayed the same. The findings suggest that comorbidities and cardiovascular risk are not solely due to long-lasting disease and chronic systematic inflammation, the researchers wrote.