Winter has no significant impact on symptoms including fatigue and pain in psoriatic arthritis patients: Study

A new study published in The Journal of Rheumatology found that the individuals with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) did not report a substantial change in their condition between the summer and winter months, despite mild changes observed.

Previous research has demonstrated that the cutaneous lesions of psoriasis patients may respond better to specific seasons, such as summer or winter. Nevertheless, there are extremely few PsA studies to date which evaluates the effect of weather fluctuation on disease activity. In order to enhance the quality of life for people with PsA, it might be beneficial to look at the relationship between DA, PROs, and weather variance. Also, people with psoriatic arthritis and other inflammatory articular disorders (IAD) describe seasonal variations in their symptoms. Thereby, this study by Maxine Joly-Chevrier and colleagues looked at the relationship between weather fluctuations, disease activity (DA), and patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in PsA patients.

From 2015 to 2020, Montreal (Environment Canada) provided hourly data of temperature, relative humidity, and pressure. These values were matched with the DA and PROs of PsA patients who were registered in RHUMADATATM. This study closely looked at the variations in mean DA and PROs between the winter and summer seasons. The clinical profile and meteorological parameters were correlated using Pearson correlation coefficients.

The study found a total of 858 PsA patients to have 2665 PROs collected from them. Wintertime saw reduced CDAI (p=0.001) and SDAI (p<0.001). Over the summer, it was shown that there were negative relationships between temperature and HAQ-DI and positive correlations between humidity and symptoms (PtGA, weariness, pain, BASDAI, CRP, BASFI). The outcomes found favorable relationships in the winter months between discomfort, weariness, and temperature. The weather could explain for less than 1% of the fluctuation in PROs, which may represent disease activity, according to optimum regression models constructed based on Akaike's Information Criteria, which the study discovered to have strong relationships with gender, age, and illness duration.

Overall, this work adds to the expanding body of data which directly links between meteorological conditions and IAD symptomatology, which are complex disorders impacted by a variety of variables. The data indicate that weather-related factors have a little impact in the variability of PsA symptoms at the group level, and that other factors may have a greater influence. 

Reference:

Joly-Chevrier, M., Coupal, L., Sauvageau, L. C., Movahedi, M., & Choquette, D. (2024). A Real-World Analysis on Weather Variation Disease Activity and Patient Reported Outcomes in Psoriatic Arthritis. In The Journal of Rheumatology (p. jrheum.2024-0520). The Journal of Rheumatology. https://doi.org/10.3899/jrheum.2024-0520