Editorial theme | Differential diagnosis and the importance of early treatment

During the Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Hub Steering Committee meeting, key opinion leaders met to discuss differential diagnosis and the importance of early treatment in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis as part of our editorial theme on delayed diagnosis. This recorded discussion was chaired by Peter van de Kerkhof, and featured Ulrich Mrowietz and Paolo Gisondi.

In this discussion, van de Kerkhof opens by highlighting some of the factors that feed into early treatment of psoriasis and psoriatic disease, and then the impact of a late diagnosis, focusing on the negative impacts on quality of life (QoL). He goes on to discuss the importance of early diagnosis to mitigate this decline in QoL and for long-term sustainable disease control.

Mrowietz closes the discussion by sharing the spectrum of psoriatic disease (Figure 1), discussing how early treatment can be used to target multiple aspects of psoriatic disease, including its comorbidities.

Figure 1. Psoriatic disease spectrum* 

*Adapted from Mrowietz, et al.¹