[The heart damage in patients with psoriatic arthritis]

To examine the rate and features of heart damage in psoriatic arthritis (PA) patients and find out whether some parameters of PA are associated with cardiac involvement.

The study enrolled 370 PA patients aged 15 to 72 years with the disease history 1 to 44 years having different variants of the articular and skin syndromes. The patients have undergone various tests including chest x-ray, ECG, echocardiography.

Myocarditis, adhesive pericarditis, valvular defects (mitral, aortic and combined mitral-aortic were diagnosed in 15.9, 18.2 and 5.7% of PA patients, respectively). Aortitis was detected in 51.3% patients with advanced sacroileitis and alkylosing spondylarthritis. Alterations in the heart were associated with spinal lesions, other systemic manifestations, activity of the disease and, in a lesser degree, with carriage of HLA-B27.

Cardiac syndrome in PA is characterized by marked heterogeneity and is one of basic systemic manifestations of this disease. Latent PA aortatis can be detected at echocardiography.