Background: Psoriatic arthritis is a chronic inflammatory arthritis that can have multi-system involvement. It is a difficult entity for guideline-directed therapy due to the heterogeneity of the disease and ongoing influx of new pharmacotherapies. Management of PsA often involves a degree of equipoise, and treatment decisions need to factor in patient perspectives and backgrounds. Patient perspectives may be influenced by social media, especially since many autoimmune conditions typically affect the younger demographic. As such, it is important for healthcare professionals to be aware of the general sentiment of patients and their sources of information.

Objectives: To investigate the social media perspectives of biologics and targeted therapy in psoriatic arthritis.

Methods: Between December 21 ^st 2024 and January 14th 2025, data was collected from the video-based social media Tiktok. We searched for ‘psoriatic arthritis biologic’ and ‘psoriatic arthritis biological treatment’ and reviewed the top 10 videos of each search to understand general sentiments and identify treatments that were commonly discussed on social media. We then narrowed the search to specific treatments using the term ‘psoriatic arthritis’ coupled with ‘adalimumab’, ‘baricitinib’ ‘brodalumab’, ‘certolizumab’, ‘etanercept’, ‘guselkumab’, ‘infliximab’, ‘ixekizumab’, ‘risankizumab’, ‘secukinumab’, ‘tildrakizumab’, ‘tofacitinib’, ‘upadacitinib’, and ‘ustekinumab’ and as well as their respective brand names. Medications included in the search were based on EULAR 2024 guidelines – TNF inhibitors, IL-17 inhibitors, IL-12/23 inhibitors, IL-23p19 inhibitors and JAK inhibitors. The top 5 videos of each medication-specific search were screened to mimic the user experience. Only English videos pertaining to psoriatic arthritis, with over 1,000 views, were included.

Results: 164 videos were screened of which 55 videos across 39 different speakers were eligible. Three videos had differing perspectives of different therapies, and in total there were 59 ‘perspectives’. The typical speaker was a young adult (92.3%), white (84.6%) and female (89.7%) (Table 1). The most discussed therapies were TNF inhibitors: adalimumab (n = 14), etanercept (n = 10), certolizumab (n = 6) and infliximab (n = 4) (Table 2). Other biologics included interleukin inhibitors: secukinumab (n = 3), ixekizumab (n = 7), risankizumab (n = 6), guselkumab (n = 3), and ustekinumab (n = 4). JAK inhibitors were featured relatively infrequently: upadacitinib (n = 3), tofacitinib (n = 2), and baricitinib (n = 1). Sentiment towards biologics and targeted therapy was divided into positive (50.8%), negative (30.5%) or neutral (18.6%). Speakers cited adverse effects (n = 19), injection site pain/reactions (n = 7) and lack/loss of efficacy (n = 5) as the most common reasons for a negative sentiment. Examples include “ I feel like I’m 90 with a hangover and the flu”, “Humira headaches were driving me to the edge”, and “it makes me dizzy and sore…still worth it for me ”. The benefits of biologics and targeted therapy were also discussed. Many speakers reported the therapies to be effective (49.2%) and a few reported it as easy (11.9%). However, many speakers were early on in their treatment course, with four of them detailing the experience of their first injection/infusion.

Conclusion: Social media perceptions of biologics and targeted therapies are largely positive, however there is significant commentary on downsides including local/systemic adverse effects and lack/loss of efficacy. It is important that physicians in their consultations address these common patient concerns that may be perpetuated by social media.

REFERENCES: NIL.

Acknowledgements: NIL.

Disclosure of Interests: None declared.

© The Authors 2025. This abstract is an open access article published in Annals of Rheumatic Diseases under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ). Neither EULAR nor the publisher make any representation as to the accuracy of the content. The authors are solely responsible for the content in their abstract including accuracy of the facts, statements, results, conclusion, citing resources etc.