When discussing psoriatic arthritis medical treatment, patients must bear in mind that there is no known cure for this disease. Hence, treatment is aimed at minimizing its symptoms and bringing relief.

Controlling Inflammation

The man symptoms of psoriatic arthritis are pain, inflammation, swelling and stiffness of the joints. Treating these symptoms soon after the disease is detected will prevent the joints from getting deformed and damaged.

Also, the more dramatic symptoms concern the joints but it is important to treat the skin disease as well.

Pain and stiffness can be controlled and managed with medications that are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. These include aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, indomethacin, or cox-2 selective inhibitors.

Drug Treatment

Medications with these active ingredients will ease inflammation and show improvement in mild cases.

Severe inflammation may call for stronger drugs such as Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs (DMARDs).

While discussing psoriatic arthritis medical treatment with your doctor, he is likely to suggest drugs that contain methotrexate as the active ingredient. These drugs have been available for a long time and are available on oral or injectable form.

Methotrexate is not used for psoriatic arthritis medical treatment alone and is prescribed for cancer as well as rheumatoid arthritis.

It has been found effective in the treatment of psoriasis as it is an anti-metabolite, and restricts the wanton multiplication of skin cells. Ii also eases inflammation in the joints.

Psoriasis & Psoriatic Arthritis

Methotrexate is especially effective when the patient suffers from obvious symptoms of both psoriasis as well as psoriatic arthritis.

Azathioprine interestingly is prescribed for individuals with mainly joint manifestations of the disease and with minimal symptoms of psoriasis.

Used for many types of arthritis, azathioprine is basically an immunosuppressant and has been used during organ transplant surgery so that the body does not reject the transplanted organ.

Another class of drugs used in psoriatic arthritis medical treatment is immunobiologics. We mentioned earlier that psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis involve a malfunctioning of the immune system.

Immunobiologics for Psoriatic Arthritis

Immunobiologics essentially suppress or interfere with T cell activity. T cells acts as messengers or couriers of information to the lymph nodes when an invader or antigen enters the body.

Once the T cells are triggered, a complex chain of events takes place in the immune system that results in the T cells stimulating the development of the psoriasis phenotype in the skin.

These are the main drugs used psoriatic arthritis medical treatment though there are several others as well.

Psoriatic Arthritis Medical Treatment is a post from: Skincare