Assessing disease activity in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis: impact on management and therapy

The management of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and psoriasis has undergone major advancements over the last decade. This has been made possible, in part, due to the introduction of new therapies for their management, as well as global collaboration in the development of outcome measures and "treat- to- target" paradigms. In this review article, we discuss how disease activity is measured and the outcome measures that have been recently developed for the management of PsA. The importance of assessing the individual domains as well as global assessments both from the physician and patient perspective, and the development of composite measures are discussed. The newer PsA specific measures are expected to be more commonly used in clinical trials as well as clinical practice.