Prologue: 2012 Annual Meeting of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA)

Abstract

The 2012 Annual Meeting of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) was held in June 2012 in Stockholm, Sweden, and attended by rheumatologists, dermatologists, and representatives of biopharmaceutical companies and patient groups from around the world. In this Prologue we introduce discussions that were held among meeting attendees. Prior to the 2012 meeting, 2 GRAPPA members organized a Fellows Symposium adjacent to the European Academy of Dermatology and Venerology meeting in Verona, where they discussed comorbidities and treatments of patients with psoriasis. The 2012 GRAPPA meeting began with a trainee symposium, where 30 rheumatology fellows and dermatology residents presented their research work. Other presentations and discussions included a review of arthritis mutilans; dermatology issues including screening tools for psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and the instruments to measure psoriasis severity; cardiovascular and other comorbidities of psoriasis and PsA; development of criteria to define inflammatory arthritis, enthesitis, dactylitis, and spondylitis; distinctions between peripheral spondyloarthritis and PsA; the status of an ultrasound outcome measure for dactylitis; and updates on several GRAPPA projects, including a study of biomarkers to predict structural damage in PsA, the ongoing video project, and several education initiatives.