Cyclosporine in psoriatic arthropathy

Psoriatic arthropathy (PsA) is an inflammatory arthropathy associated with skin or nail psoriasis with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. A pragmatic therapeutic approach to PsA is to stratify the disease manifestations according to their response to synthetic and biological agents. It is now reasonably well established that peripheral arthritis is amenable to treatment with synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, while psoriatic pelvispondylitis and inflammatory tendon lesions appear to require the use of biological agents. Cyclosporine is a calcineurin inhibitor belonging to the synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs group. It has been shown to be effective in treating both arthritis and psoriasis. In this paper, we will briefly summarise the current knowledge about the efficacy of cyclosporine, both as a monotherapy and as an adjunctive treatment for PsA.