BIRD has agreed to fund 9 months’ salary costs for University researcher Ms Amelia Green’s time to complete work looking at factors that may predict the onset of psoriatic arthritis in people with psoriasis, as part of a broader study.  This will allow the research team to take maximum advantage of the rich dataset on file (over 100,000 patients).

In particular, she will investigate the prevalence, incidence and evolution of musculoskeletal symptoms reported to GPs by people with psoriasis in UK primary care between 1998 and 2014 and the actions taken by GPs as a result of the reporting of musculoskeletal symptoms (e.g. ordering of blood tests, x-rays and prescribing of analgesic and anti-inflammatory medicines).  She will also look at the use of primary health care resources in patients with psoriasis and PsA and feed it into the cost-effectiveness analysis of the main randomised controlled trial that forms part of the wider study.