Introduction: The psoriatic patients have an increased number of associated comorbidities. Of these, cardiovascular diseases present the highest incidence and severity. The understanding of the cardiovascular risk in patients with psoriatic arthritis was supported from the rheumatoid arthritis studies that suggested that patients with psoriatic arthritis have a risk of cardiovascular diseases similar to patients presenting rheumatoid arthritis. The presence of the metabolic syndrome further increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its components in two groups of patients: those presenting psoriatic arthritis and those with rheumatoid arthritis.
Material and method: The study included two groups of patients: group one – 40 patients with psoriatic arthritis defined by Moll and Wright criteria, respectively the group two – 51 patients with rheumatoid arthritis defined by American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria. The metabolic syndrome was defined according to the consensus definition (incorporating IDF and American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute -AHA/NHLBI definitions).
Results: We enrolled in the study 91 patients having a mean age of 57.7±10.4SD (54.7±10.2 SD psoriatic arthritis, 60.01±10.0 SD rheumatoid arthritis). The mean disease duration (years) was 4.12±4.1SD for psoriatic arthritis and 6.7±7.8SD for rheumatoid arthritis. The prevalence of the metabolic syndrome was 67.5% in the group with psoriatic arthritis and 37.2% in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The psoriatic patients had a higher prevalence of impared fasting glucose (52.5% vs 27.4%, p=0.018), and elevated trygliceride values as compared with those presenting rheumatoid arthritis (25% vs 11% p=0.0004).
Conclusions: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome is increased in patients with psoriatic arthritis as compared to patients with rheumatoid arthritis.