These are my symptoms but not sure if all are PsA related:
Psoriasis
Type: mostly guttate, some inverse psoriasis in folds, rare plaques, and once had tiny water filled blisters that seemed to become guttate(?)
Location: scalp, eyebrows, nares, ears, back, belly button, underarms, back of thighs, top of feet, skin folds including down under. Strangely NOT on elbows or knees so far.
Fatigue
Stiffness in morning that improves during day so long as I move
Plantar fasciitis
Dactylitis aka sausage fingers
Joint pain/enthesitis/costochondritis (?)
Location: metatarsals in both feet, knees - Lt worse, SI joint, lumbar and cervical vertebrae, DIP joints both hands - Lt worse, wrists, lower ribs where they meet sternum, sternoclavicular joint
Recurrent Blepharitis/conjunctivitis - cracking and peeling at the outer corners plus dry, crusty eyes
Inability to close my left hand
Loss of hand strength bilaterally
Tinnitus - loud and high pitched but no hearing loss per testing
Tingling and loss of hot/cold sensation in fingers and toes (constant)
Tingling and odd sensations on cheeks/nose (comes and goes)
Very painful muscle spasms that occur in random places - hip, low back, neck, toes, upper back, arches, jaw
Sciatica
So many symptoms, sometimes I feel like a hypochondriac but since the PsA diagnosis I know there is a cause for at least some of what I am feeling and it is NOT all in my head.
Hello @Blue_Waters. Gosh that’s a load of symptoms all at once. Personally I’d say yes most of them can be all PsA. The tingling could be neuropathy and if so can be medicated separately, which I’m told can ease it considerably. Others on here have recently posted just about that. So maybe have a look. Let’s hope your PsA meds ease some of these other symptoms down some more thought.
I agree with @Poo_therapy, most of them could well be PsA-related. Though no. 12 sounds more like a logical result of all the others!
The many and varied symptoms do tend to make us feel as if we’re going nuts. But then this is a whole body disease. However the plus side is that when treatment and self-management start to be effective, the whole body (and indeed the mind) also benefit. Oh wow, that’s so easy for me to say from my perspective … I’m guessing you’re newly diagnosed. I should rather say ‘travel hopefully / keep at it’, things are very likely to improve.
Thank you for the encouragement. I have most of the top ten currently but the rest of them come and go. But these are all the symptoms I reported to doctors over the past couple decades and was basically dismissed. Bursitis in both shoulders is very old. Loss of ROM but no longer painful. I mentioned it because doctors could never figure out why I had it suddenly (not a pro baseball pitcher) first in rt shoulder and then moved to left. Treatment had little effect and then it went away 2 years later. Very weird. Also no sciatica now but multiple bouts in past. (No fun!!). No inverse and only ~30% guttate psoriasis coverage.
Forgot 2 symptoms:
Brain fog
GI problems for decades… celiac negative blood test.
I’d say most of them are pretty typical. For example, in my 7 years of PsA, I’ve had all 19 (including the two new ones you listed) except number 8, 11, 14, and 15 (though I’ve had other shoulder issues, and other types of neuropathy in my extremities).
Unfortunately, I could still add quite a few to this list
In most cases, I find that when the PsA meds are working well, all of the associated symptoms subside (at that point you can actually identify if you have something else - or - Yay! - if it is all PsA and your meds are working for it).
The only one of the list above that does not appear to have a close correlation with how my meds are working is Tinnitus. It is so often mentioned on here though, that it almost seems too coincidental.
I believe I have pulsatile tinnitus, not sure if it’s related but it appeared around onset of PsA. It is when I can feel my blood pressure in my ear tubes in my neck area and hear my heart beating. It can be scary like I am going to have a heart attack but it usually just comes, lasts for a while, an hour at most usually, then suddenly I realize it has gone away. I’ve checked my blood pressure when it’s happening at it is normal. I read up on it and one of the possible causes is inflammation or infection of the ear canals or throat. I don’t get sick or infections very often, even with all the immunosuppressants, so I don’t think I’ve had an infection for 3 years since onset. Inflammation I will buy though since it manifests in so many other ways.
Gosh I’ve always (I think) heard my heart beating and certainly have it disturb me getting off to sleep at times. And I’ve certainly suffered low grade tinnitus since PsA made worse by certain meds too. And I’ve always thought the tinnitus was anyway PsA related.
Hi Blue Waters,
I’d say nearly every one of your symptoms have been experienced by most of us here, including myself. You didn’t mention tendinitis, but I think maybe wrist tendinitis could be the cause of your weak hands? I HAD terrible tendinitis in my shoulders and wrists. OMG your number 8–I had forgotten I couldn’t make a fist with my right hand before I started Enbrel! I couldn’t see my knuckles in either hand! WOW, sometimes I forget how much improved my life is since being on Enbrel!!!
Sad thing is, the years of not treating PsA brought on a lot of damage and other health problems.I can tell you that numbers 2,4,5,7,8,9,11,14,15,16,17 are non-existent anymore and I’m hoping Enbrel keeps them at bay…a couple of them I didn’t have or I’d describe them differently for myself—such as the tingling in hands and feet—I had severe burning and sharp pain as walking on a bed of hot coals and nails. My eye/vision problems are different, too. Lots of blurred/double vision and a weak left eyelid.
Although I’m very pleased how well Enbrel works for me—my health is definitely not good. I’m pretty sure my coronary artery disease is from PsA.
I guess it’ll always be an uphill battle, although things could be a lot worse. Also, I’m 65. My PsA symptoms started in my early 50s. Actually I had psoriasis since 22, back trouble in my mid 30s, plantar fasciitis at 40, IBS from mid 40s to late 50s and weird heart problems starting in my late 40s.
For some of us, the diagnosis of PsA takes a long time—doctors looked at my fingernails at every visit. It wasn’t until my fingernails had pitting and lifting that the dots were connected.
I hope you get a treatment plan so you can eliminate the worst of your symptoms.
I recognize all the symptoms…i just assume I am auto-immuny, with meniere’s disease, chronic bursitis in shoulder and hips (steroid shots are amazing!) My Rheumi tends to look at labs not me… so fustrating.
I think its all connected! Now i have bronchiectasis…?
Sorry to disappear for a while there. We were moving and fixing up the old house. Of course, I overdid it and brought on a doozy of a flare. Rheumy gave me a prednisone shot and I’m doing better now. The Enbrel is keeping things mostly status quo. Labs are good but does not work as well on my joints as Humira. Luckily my current Rheumy looks at whole picture not just labs. We are thinking about switching to Cosentyx soon. I have not had a HLA-B27 blood test. Does it change the treatment if it comes back positive?
I guess I also left tendonitis off my list. The shoulder thing was first diagnosed as tendonitis then changed to bursitis and a few other names. I have also had tendonitis in my fingers and wrists. I suspect I have had it in other places but not officially diagnosed.
While most of my other symptoms have been improved while on biologics, Numbers 10 and 12 have not improved at all or became worse so I tend to think these may be unrelated even though they showed up around the same time as other symptoms. Still possibly autoimmune related just not PsA.
Thank you to everyone who replied. It is good to know that I am not the only one with multiple symptoms.
Re. number 12, difficult to talk about online. Keep working at it, thinking differently, creatively, talking to your partner as honestly as you can stand to! Things change as we get older, let alone with PsA, but my instincts tell me that if loss of libido bothers you then you probably will find a way forward & possibly / probably (?) do have some desire, but it has just become a bit more complicated!
So sorry you have so many things to deal with at once. If we use your list as a Master list of symptoms we can all code our symptoms by # and add #s as we go along. I NEED to make a game out of this horrid disease so I don’t go completely NUTS!
Let’s see, I share #s 16, 13, (thankfully NOT 12 but my partner is deathly afraid to touch me for fear she’ll break something) 10, 9, 6 (ribs & OMG they hurt worse than the 3 heart attacks I had), 3, 2, & 1 from your list.
Right now I can add # 17 - Sausage toe - that is a real sexy one! #18 - Grumpiness and depression.
Sorry for late reply. I have also had the pulsatile tinnitus but I get it with heart palpitations. I finally figured out that this is related to my other autoimmune diagnosis: Hashimoto Thyroiditis. When I get very hypo and my TSH starts going up, I get these symptoms along with a feeling of doom - a vague anxiety that something bad is going to happen which I guess is my subconscious brain’s way of saying go see a doctor. As soon as my levothyroxine dose is adjusted, it all disappears within a few days. (sorry for late reply)
Glad that my symptom list is helpful. I should clarify that thankfully I do not have all of these symptoms at the same time. I would definitely go nuts if I had all of them at once. Yes, DougE, that rib pain is BAD. It is impossible to find a comfortable position to sit or sleep. The first time I got PSA rib pain, I thought I was having a heart attack and ended up with an expensive hospital workup. I was happy to hear my heart was OK but the hospital doc tried to tell me it was only heartburn. I knew that wasn’t right because the GI meds didn’t take away all the pain in my chest. This was before my PSA diagnosis. My rheumatologist told me PSA could cause rib pain and that solved the mystery.
The weird thing is although all my fingers look like sausages and the pain in my feet is worse than my hands, my toes look normal (so far). PSA is a weird disease and manifests in so many ways which makes it so hard to diagnose.
I should have also added depression to my list but I have had seasonal affective disorder for a long time so I don’t believe the PSA causes that per se but it definitely makes my mood worse. It is a blessing to have an understanding spouse.
