Ocular involvement in Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA) patients is mainly associated with uveitis but there remains a paucity of data on dry eye and retinal abnormalities. We aimed to analyze dry eye and subclinical retinal abnormalities in a cohort of PsA patients sine-psoriasis (PsO).
PsA patients sine-PsO were enrolled. Best-corrected-visual-acuity, ocular-surface-disease-index (OSDI), Schirmer test, tear film breakup-time, standard-automated-perimetry (SAP, mean deviation-MD, pattern standard deviation-PSD), fundus-perimetry (FP), and spectral-domain-optical-coherence-tomography (SD-OCT) were performed.
A total of 80 eyes from 40 PsA patients with moderate-severe disease activity, and 70 eyes from 35 healthy control (HC) were evaluated. Higher dry eye prevalence occurred in PsA than HC ( < 0.0001). ESR was positively related with OSDI ( < 0.001) and negatively related with Schirmer ( = 0.007). In PsA, SAP registered higher MD ( < 0.0001) and higher PSD ( = 0.005) in comparison with HC. PSD resulted positively correlated with ESR ( = 0.04) and CRP ( = 0.01), while MD showed a negative correlation with CRP ( = 0.01). Both FP mean differential sensitivity and mean defect were lower in PsA then HC ( < 0.0001). In PsA, FP differential sensitivity was directly related with cumulative steroids ( = 0.02).
In PsA patients sine-PsO, dry eye and subclinical abnormalities in visual functions occurred being potentially related to systemic inflammation.

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