• spondyloarthropathy

In their initial work, Moll and Wright recognised five patterns of psoriatic arthritis (PsA)—namely, distal joint disease, oligoarthritis, polyarthritis, arthritis mutilans, and spondylitis.¹ Although psoriatic spondyloarthropathy was recognised as a specific pattern of PsA, it has become clear that the presence of isolated spondyloarthropathy (SpA) in PsA is unusual, and in most cases, it occurs with peripheral arthritis.^2,3 We undertook the present work to analyse the clinical features of our patients with psoriatic SpA and to compare the different subgroups included within the psoriatic SpA spectrum.

One hundred patients with psoriatic SpA, defined in accordance with the European Spondyloarthropathy Study Group (ESSG) criteria,⁴ were consecutively recruited and their clinical records were analysed in this retrospective cross sectional study. All patients were evaluated according to a standard protocol, and their functional ability was assessed using the Health Assessment Questionnaire-Specific for SpA (HAQ-S).⁵ We included patients with isolated axial involvement, as well as those with axial plus peripheral disease. The study group was divided according to the articular patterns seen during …