Psoriatic arthritis | Ph.D. thesis by Elsa Sousa achieves innovative results
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Mulher, médica, com cabelo preto encaracolado

What is psoriatic arthritis? In the words of Elsa Sousa, Rheumatologist and Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM), it is simple to describe: “A chronic inflammatory rheumatic disease, associated with psoriasis, which affects joints, tendons, ligaments and the bone structure itself.” She adds that, "it is a disease that causes pain, joint deformation and bone destruction, and, therefore, has an important impact on patients and their quality of life. It also has profound social and economic repercussions".

"We estimate that of the approximately 250 thousand Portuguese diagnosed with psoriasis in Portugal, between 20% and 30% may develop psoriatic arthritis", she says.

Elsa Sousa, in an interview to Diário de Notícias, says she was surprised, but also grateful for the distinction of best doctoral thesis of 2019 from the Lisbon Academic Medical Centre of the University of Lisbon (CAML) and for the João Lobo Antunes Merit Award, granted by the João Lobo Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine, in its first edition in 2020.

On the eve of publicly presenting this work, the researcher said to Diário de Notícias that she brought together a team of more than one hundred health professionals, in order to achieve the results she wanted, and that went beyond the objective for this thesis: "I wanted it to be an alert for the medical community and for the general population, in order to prevent and mitigate the impact of psoriatic arthritis".

You can read the full report here.