Clinical and Dermoscopic Comparison of Rheumatoid Arthritis, Ankylosing Spondylitis and Psoriasis Patients' Nails

Psoriasis is a common chronic inflammatory disease with many comorbidities. Dermatologists have a very important role in the early diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, which is one of the most important comorbidities of psoriasis. Therefore, studies have been conducted on many factors predicting the risk of psoriatic arthritis and it has been concluded that nail involvement is closely related to psoriatic arthritis.For this reason, the importance of nail examination in the follow-up of psoriasis patients has increased significantly. Nail examination should be done carefully to predict the risk of developing psoriatic arthritis, especially at the beginning of the disease and subclinical types, and dermoscopy should be used to identify patients who may be clinically uncertain.

In addition, rheumatoid arthritis and spondylopathy patients have a lot in common with psoriatic arthritis patients.In these patients, there is no clear distinction to diagnose joint involvement, and their distinction is mostly based on the presence or absence of skin findings.Nail findings have an important place among this skin findings in the diagnosis of these patients.

Based on all these, this study questions the benefit of clinical and dermoscopic examination of nail findings in the early stages to differentiate these patients, as well as comparing the nail findings and revealing the differences and similarities.