People with psoriasis have a heightened risk for at least one additional major medical disease, researchers found.
Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, and colleagues described in JAMA Dermatology their efforts to determine the prevalence of major medical comorbidity among 9,035 persons in the United Kingdom, aged 25 to 64 years, with mild, moderate, or severe psoriasis. The analysis also included 90,350 controls without psoriasis.
Among the patients with psoriasis, 51.8% had mild disease, 35.8% had moderate disease, and 12.4% had severe disease (defined as involvement of more than 10% of their body-surface area). Most previous studies suggesting a higher prevalence of comorbid disease in individuals with psoriasis used treatment with systemic therapies or phototherapy as a surrogate marker for moderate to severe disease, but that approach may not accurately reflect disease severity.
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Psoriasis was associated with higher prevalence of chronic pulmonary disease, diabetes, diabetes with systemic complications, mild liver disease, MI, peptic ulcer disease, peripheral vascular disease, renal disease and rheumatologic disease. Trend analysis revealed significant associations between psoriasis severity and each of those diseases.
