Dr Soumya Chakravarty on Nontherapeutic Strategies for Psoriatic Arthritis Management

Diet, meditation, and exercise are several nontherapeutic strategies to manage symptom burden of psoriatic arthritis, said Soumya Chakravarty, MD, PhD, FACP, FACR, strategic lead, Rheumatology Therapeutic Area at Janssen.

Transcript

What are some nondrug treatment approaches that can help manage symptom burden of psoriatic arthritis?

Now, as far as the nondrug treatment approach, in terms of helping manage symptom burden, I think that's very important to consider in a disease like psoriatic arthritis, because of the elements that we've talked about. Apart from inflammation, and the sequelae of that inflammation, like pain, like fatigue, there are nondrug approaches that we can take.

That includes having a healthy diet, trying low-impact exercise, taking care of one's mental health. And we've talked about fatigue as an example of psoriatic arthritis causing that.

So, Tai Chi, meditation, telteherapy—these are all strategies that help ease fatigue over time. At the same time, patients can find some benefit in being able to join support programs, share their psoriatic arthritis experiences with other patients and families. And, of course, make sure that this management plan and the approach that's taken both from a therapeutic, but also nontherapeutic approach is individualized and personalized, because again, there's no one-size-fits-all approach here.

Each person living with psoriatic arthritis is very unique. We'll need to test out, again, different management strategies with their health care provider in that shared decision-making context to see what works best for them.