Ticopa Serum Analysis: an Analysis of Blood Samples From the TICOPA Study

A range of different drugs are available to treat psoriatic arthritis (PsA) inflammation. However, clinicians are unable to predict who will respond well to a given drug, who will fail to respond and who will develop side effects. Responder/non-responder effects may also differ for the skin and joint domains of PsA. Patients currently undergo a trial and error phase of treatment, sometimes withstanding a period of nonresponse, and thus pain and discomfort, for a period of time. Treatment failures also waste resources and undermine patient confidence. There is a pressing need to identify predictors for response / non response and side effects, and this study will utilise novel bioinformatics approaches to address this need. The samples and clinical information collected from participants in the TICOPA (Effect of tight control of inflammation in early psoriatic arthritis) study (1) are a valuable resource. The investigators aim to use these existing serum samples to determine the potential of molecular markers to predict patients' response to treatment both with regard to effects and side effects. This analysis could potentially lead to the identification of serum and clinical parameters which when measured in a defined combination would be predictive of patients' response to treatment. 1 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00347-5