ASDAS makes sense but evidence needed
Health care costs began rising steeply at least 3 years prior to diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, as well.
“We need to do better with our psoriatic arthritis patients. I think this beautiful study is a call to attention for us to make sure that we’re identifying people with psoriatic arthritis as early as we can,” Dr. Kavanaugh said.
As for the treat-to-target approach that has become so widespread in the management of rheumatoid arthritis, it has gained a toehold in the treatment of psoriatic arthritis. Dr. Kavanaugh was a member of an international task force that recently published treat-to-target recommendations for psoriatic arthritis and axial spondyloarthritis (Ann Rheum Dis. 2018 Jan;77[1]:3-17).
The recommendation for defining the target in psoriatic arthritis was to use the DAPSA or MDA. However, this was a controversial recommendation because of the dearth of evidence. It passed with 51.6% of the task force votes and a level of agreement of 7.9 on a 0-10 scale.
Despite the demonstrable room for improvement in psoriatic arthritis treatment outcomes, better times are likely to be coming for affected patients. A record-breaking number of publications on psoriatic arthritis was published in 2017, and three additional drugs received marketing approval for the disease.
Dr. Kavanaugh and Dr. Ruderman reported serving as consultants to and receiving research grants from numerous pharmaceutical companies.