Is the gender an important variable in evaluating the psoriatic arthritis activity when using stockerau activity score?

Abstract

Background: In last decade, several disease activity scores for the inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis were validated. Still, the auto - evaluation in real life is less utilised in clinical practice. A new score – the Stockerau Activity Score for Psoriatic Arthritis (SASPA), aimed to be used by the patients is to be validated. Aim: to evaluate the gender as an independent variable for the SASPA score. Material and method: A prospective, cross-sectional study was started on February 2016 in the rheumatology ambulatory settings. SAPSA activity score consisting of five questions aiming the tender joints, the degree of arthritis, the stiffness, the general health and the skin disease was completed by thirty - six (17 women, 19 men) patients diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis (PsA). Mann Whitney test was applied. Results: All the patients completed the SAPSA in less than 2 minutes. No differences were observed concerning the tender joints (p: 0.6067), the arthritis overall evaluation (p: 0.6863), the general health (p: 0.5074) and the stiffness (p: 0.8951) comparing the results of women versus men. On the p scale we observed a tendency to achieve a differentiation when asked by the skin involvement (p: 0.0789), being with a delta of 0.4 more affected the women. Conclusions: The skin involvement in association with the gender is to be carefully considered when applying activity scores in PsA.