Sleep quality in partners with spouses and children affected by psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis: insights and implications from a pilot study

Background: Sleep disturbances are rather common in psoriasis (PsO) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients; however, it is still unclear if they depend intrinsically on PsO/PsA or the predisposing comorbidities such as metabolic syndrome. Methods: This is a multicenter cross-sectional assessing the sleep quality in partners of PsO/PsA patients. Patients and patients’ partners were recruited consecutively. After a dermatological visit to the patient, the partner was interviewed to score his/her quality of sleep with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Results: A sample of 84 subjects (aged 45.38±8.55 years, 42 males and 42 females, with an average BMI of 25.24±1.75 kg/m2) were included. Fifty-two (61.9%) of them developed PsO or PsA before starting the relationship. Although the average PSQI was 4.79±1.47, the prevalence rate of poor sleep raters (PSQI ≥5) was 42 (50.0%). At the multivariate regression, the best independent predictors of sleep quality were “having a PsO/PsA child” and “having a partner affected by PsO since before relationship”. More in detail, the former predicted a worse sleep quality [OR 6.98 (95%CI 1.39-35.06)] and the latter a better sleep quality [OR 0.07 (95%CI 0.02-0.23)]. Specifically, performing a subgroup analysis among those who had a child and stratifying according to the presence of an affected child, no differences could be found for each parameter under study, except for PSQI, which was significantly higher in spouses with affected children (6.68±1.11 versus 4.35±1.11, p<0.001). Conclusions: The present study showed that having a child significantly negatively impacted on sleep quality of the parent, whereas having a partner being affected by PsO since before the beginning of the relationship protected against poor sleep quality. Having a child affected by PsO was, instead, a risk factor