A new study from the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology has some findings that are catching people’s attention.
The research was led by Mimi Chung, who is a researcher at the University of California in San Francisco.
She and her team wanted to see if there was a connection between psoriasis, a skin condition, and rheumatic diseases.
How Was the Study Done?
Chung’s team used a big database from the US called the “All of Us” national database. This database includes a lot of different people from various races and backgrounds.
They looked at two groups of people:
- A group that had been diagnosed with psoriasis at least twice.
- Another group that never had psoriasis.
The main goal was to find out if the first group had more cases of rheumatic diseases than the second group.
What Did They Find?
The results were interesting. People with psoriasis were more likely to also have certain rheumatic diseases. Some of these diseases include:
- Psoriatic arthritis (known as PsA)
- Osteoarthritis
- Gout
- Fibromyalgia
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Ankylosing spondylitis
- Sjogren syndrome
- Systemic sclerosis.
Since some of these conditions are similar to PsA, the researchers looked closely at people with PsA. They found that many of them also had osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia.
What Does This Mean?
The connection between psoriasis and rheumatic diseases might be because of some shared causes. For example, having a high body weight (or body mass index) might be a factor.
But what’s surprising is that even when the researchers considered body weight, the link between psoriasis and rheumatic diseases still stood out.
Anything Else to Note?
Yes, a few of the researchers who worked on this study have connections to companies that make medicines.
But it’s common for experts in a field to have ties to the industry. It’s always good to know these things when reading a study’s findings.
If you care about skin health, please read studies about the top signs of diabetic skin disease, and the Mediterranean diet could help lower the skin cancer risk.
For more information about skin health, please see recent studies about eating fish linked to a higher risk of skin cancer, and results showing how to combat the effects of aging on your skin.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Follow us on Twitter for more articles about this topic.
Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
