Cardiovascular involvement in psoriatic arthritis* Coinvolgimento cardiovascolare nell'artrite psoriasica

soriatic arthritis (PsA) is usually con-sidered a benign disease, but this idea has been challenged by some recent data. Sheeb et al. (1) found there was no signifi-cant difference in survival between patients with PsA and that observed in the general population. However, it has recently been confirmed that PsA is a chronic inflamma-tory arthritis and that, like rheumatoid ar-thritis (RA), it is associated with increased cardiovascular mortality (2-4). It has been reported that patients with severe psoriasis requiring hospitalization have a 50% in-creased risk of cardiovascular (CV) mortal-ity (5), which seems to be associated with markers of disease activity, such as the pri-or use of medications, a high erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) at presentation, and evidence of radiological alterations (3).Traditional CV risk factors are more com-