Psoriatic Arthritis Linked to Increased Heart Disease Risk

“A large proportion of patients could be having silent coronary artery disease,” Tam said.

The study focuses on one group of patients at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, and the results might not be applicable everywhere, said Lihi Eder of the University of Toronto, who wasn’t involved with the study. The researchers also couldn’t study the effect of medications or changes for individual patients.

“The effect of psoriatic disease varies significantly over time,” she told Reuters Health. But additional studies “investigating atherosclerosis . . . could assist in understanding a link.”

Reference

1. Shen J, Wong KT, Cheng IT, et al. Increased prevalence of coronary plaque in patients with psoriatic arthritis without prior diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Ann Rheum Dis. 2017 Jan 4. pii: annrheumdis-2016-210390. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2016-210390. [Epub ahead of print].