Up to 30% of patients with psoriasis suffer from concurrent psoriatic arthritis, and both the diseases have worse quality-of-life outcomes compared to the general population. There is limited literature comparing quality-of-life outcomes between these diseases. We seek to compare quality-of-life outcomes between both these groups.
The current study is a cross-sectional analysis of a cohort of 252 patients with psoriatic diseases, who were recruited from 2 tertiary-care centers. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect demographic and validated quality-of-life data using short form-12 (SF 12), health assessment questionnaire (HAQ), and dermatology life quality index (DLQI). Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to compare the quality-of-life outcomes.
We included 107 (42.5%) psoriatic arthritis and 145 (57.5%) psoriasis patients in the cohort. The groups had comparable gender distribution and co-morbid diseases prevalence, but arthritis patients were older and received biologics/DMARDs more frequently than psoriasis patients. The physical indices (identified by HAQ and SF 12 PCS) were worse for psoriatic arthritis, whereas the mental/psychometric indices (identified by DLQI and SF 12 MCS) were comparable between both the groups.
Despite aggressive therapy, physical quality of life was worse in psoriatic arthritis patients compared to psoriasis patients. The mental quality-of-life indices were comparable in both the groups and were still below the population norm. These results suggest need for screening for psoriatic arthritis in patients with psoriasis to reduce the burden of physical quality of life and screening for early signs of psychiatric illnesses in both these disease populations.