Is there more to psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis?
So for many people who develop psoriasis they often are very surprised when they also get a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, but this is only scratching the surface of psoriatic disease. In order to understand what other conditions may also manifest themselves in people who have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis we have had a process of surveying people who contact us.
In this article we are looking at those data entered via an online survey, which was conducted between 20 November 2014 and 22 August 2019. A total number of surveys completed and submitted was N = 591 (Female 474, Male 117). Age ranged between 18 and 76 with the average age being 44. We also gathered location of where people lived with 340 living in England, 57 in Scotland, 22 in Wales, 13 in Northern Ireland and a further 159 living elsewhere in the world. This matches locations of those who generally view our website although primarily these are English speaking countries.
In the survey which was aimed at understanding how psoriatic disease affects peoples’ quality of life we asked a number of questions and allowed free text answers. For this analysis we are only looking at the section about related or associated conditions that people said they had or had been diagnosed with, whilst also having a diagnosis of psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis.
The following are the top 10 entered conditions that appeared in the survey, listed in the most commonly occurring order.
- Depression
- High Blood Pressure/Hypertension
- Asthma
- Diabetes
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- Fibromyalgia
- Anxiety
- Osteopenia/Osteoporosis
- Allergies
- Hypothyroidism
Less commonly mentioned were a number of other conditions as follows, listed in alphabetical order:
- Alopecia
- Anaemia
- Ankylosing Spondylitis
- Asperger’s
- Bechet’s
- Bipolar
- Carpal Tunnel
- Cerebral Palsy
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Colitis
- Crohns
- Diverticulitis
- Eczema
- Epilepsy
- Fatigue
- Hay fever
- Heart Disease
- High Cholesterol
- Insomnia
- Kidney Disease
- Liver Disease
- Lupus
- Migraine
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
- Obesity
- Plantar Fasciitis
- Post-Traumatic Stress
- Raynaud’s
- Rhinitis
- Scoliosis
- Sjorgens
- Social Phobia
- Tinnitus
- Ulcerative Colitis
- Underactive Thyroid
It is clear from those that have psoriasis and or psoriatic arthritis that there may be more going on than perhaps is just related to the manifestations in the skin and the pains within the joints. It could be argued that many of these conditions that have been reported are unrelated to psoriatic disease but given the frequency of occurrence perhaps delving deeper into what is happening to an individual with psoriatic disease is worth a much closer look.
This analysis is just a simple pointer and we need much more detailed information and investigation of the underlying causes that lead to the symptoms of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. As an organisation we will be pursuing this area of investigation to help inform a fuller understanding of what it is like to be a psoriatic patient.
We have an ongoing process of gathering data via the PAPAA survey and we will continue to analyse those data and compare with data that we have already collected. If you do have either psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis then please help us to explore the conditions further, by playing your part and completing our survey, which you can do anonymously and easily complete by clicking the following link. The PAPAA survey
Data analysis by C Marven, January 2021