What Are the Symptoms of Psoriatic Arthritis?

Your joints are essential to most every movement you make, and over time, conditions like arthritis can damage and inflame joints to make doing even basic things harder. There are over 100 different types of this rheumatic condition, with around 21% of U.S. adults (53.2 million) receiving a diagnosis of some type as recently as 2021.

Psoriatic arthritis is a common form of this joint illness, and while it does affect the same areas, it doesn’t present itself exactly the same way as other types like osteoarthritis and gout. Let’s explore this illness by looking at how it works, its signs, possible complications, and how it can be treated.

Residents of the Norwood, Anderson, and Westside, Ohio, and Crestview Hills, Kentucky, areas looking for relief from psoriatic arthritis can get help with the dedicated medical team at Riverhills Neuroscience.

Defining psoriatic arthritis

Arthritis targets the bones, muscles, tendons, and other tissue in joints, leading to inflammation, pain, and in many cases the breakdown of the joints over time. Other types of arthritis happen due to wear and tear of joints, injuries, infections, and other factors, but psoriatic arthritis is an autoimmune disease. This means it results from abnormalities in how your immune system works, which result in it attacking healthy tissue and causing a range of problems in your joints.

There are different types of psoriatic arthritis, including:

• Distal interphalangeal predominant: causes symptoms in joints near the end of your phalanges, the bones in your fingers and toes
• Symmetric polyarthritis: attacks as many as five joints simultaneously on both sides of the body
• Asymmetric oligoarticular: causes issues in up to four joints on both sides, but not necessarily the same joints on each side, such as one elbow and one knee
• Spondylitis: joint inflammation of your spine that also causes pain in your shoulders and hips
• Arthritis mutilans: a rare but severe form that leads to inflammation in your hands and feet bad enough to damage bone

Which type of psoriatic arthritis it’s classified as depends on the part of the body it’s targeting.

Symptoms and possible complications

As arthritis affects joints, most types of the disease will lead to basic signs like stiffness, swelling, pain, tenderness, and limited range of motion, but psoriatic arthritis will also cause other unique signs, like:

Nail changes

Discoloration or pitting in finger and toenails as well as separation of the nail from the nail bed are possible signs of nail psoriasis.

Eye inflammation

Uveitis is a form of eye inflammation that other forms of arthritis don’t generally exhibit.

Rash

A psoriasis rash is also likely, especially if you have both the skin condition and the joint problem. It appears as scaly, silver or gray patches on your skin on your joints.

Dactylitis

Also referred to as sausage fingers, this is a specific form of swelling in your finger joints that make them look like the food.

Having this condition also increases your risk of other illnesses such as high blood pressure (hypertension), high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia), obesity, diabetes, muscle weakness, anemia, and depression.

Treatment options

While there is no cure for psoriatic arthritis, there are several options to manage the symptoms, which include medications, surgeries, therapies and forms of self-care.

Drugs used to help with this problem are available, such as over-the-counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), but others like disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), and biologic response modifiers (BRMs) can help treat inflammation and immune system response. 

Steroid injections into joints can help reduce inflammation, and joint replacement surgery can help if the damage to the joint is too severe.

Therapeutic solutions include occupational and physical therapies, and you can reduce the impact of psoriatic arthritis on your life through keeping a healthy weight, regular exercise, stopping smoking, reducing alcohol, and modifying daily tasks to protect your joints.

Psoriatic arthritis is a problem without a cure, but there are ways to keep it from controlling your life. Make an appointment with the team at Riverhills Neuroscience today to find the treatment that works to fit your needs.