Here are some recent statistics about PsA, an autoimmune disease that causes a person’s overactive immune system to attack that person’s own joints, cells, organs, and connective tissues. There is no cure for PsA.
PsA is not life-threatening. You don’t die from PsA (although you can die from many of the side effects of the treatments and co-morbidities.) The damage done by PsA limits your quality of life by destroying your joints, inflaming your connective tissues, damaging your eye sight, causing extreme fatigue on a near-constant basis, and leading to brain fog, a condition that causes confusion, lack of focus, inability to reason or problem solve, and memory loss. It steals a person’s independence and ability to do basic daily tasks.
Many of the treatments that are currently available are insanely expensive, are excluded or severely limited by health insurance plans, and can cause kidney failure, liver disorders, stomach and intestinal distress, induce Lupus, or in some rare cases, can cause the patient to develop cancer.
While there are many treatments to try, it is very difficult to predict which symptoms will respond to which treatments. These treatments have very different success rates in different people, and even once a treatment begins to work, it frequently stops working for no apparent reason, resulting in the patient having to change treatments unexpectedly.
While treatments do help lessen the symptoms for many people, only a small percentage of people with PsA actually go into remission, and even fewer stay in remission.
