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High prevalence of other autoimmune diseases found in patients with psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, research reveals

Thursday, October 29 2009 | Comments

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Psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis may be linked to the development of other autoimmune diseases, such as Crohn's disease, new findings suggest.

Researchers evaluated the prevalence of other inflammatory autoimmune diseases in nearly 22,500 patients aged 18 years or older with psoriasis, 3,066 patients with psoriatic arthritis and more than 100,000 matching control patients. All the subjects were continuously enrolled in IMS Health Inc.'s Health Integrated Administrative Claims Database from 2001 to 2002 and had at least one medical service visit of any kind.

When compared with the control subjects, patients with psoriasis and no arthritic manifestations had a higher prevalence of three gastrointestinal diseases. Among this group, the prevalence ratio was 1.6 for Crohn's disease, 1.3 for ulcerative colitis, and 1.4 for inflammatory bowel disease.

Similarly, the patients with psoriatic arthritis had a higher prevalence of all three of these gastrointestinal autoimmune diseases relative to the control patients. Among these subjects, the prevalence ratio was 2.1 for Crohn's disease, 2.0 for ulcerative colitis, and 1.8 for inflammatory bowel disease. These patients also had nearly five times higher prevalence of giant cell arteritis and two times higher prevalence of pulmonary fibrosis compared with control group.

Neither psoriasis group had a higher prevalence of multiple sclerosis or type 1 diabetes mellitus, according to the data.

"The data suggest that evaluating patients with psoriasis for other associated disorders in a
prospective manner may be important, because they may be more likely to experience the onset of another autoimmune disease," the authors said. "Treatment planning for these patients could, therefore, require the medical management of more than one autoimmune disease. Further, our data suggest that psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis may be divergent in ways previously not described that could inform future research."

The analysis was published in the September issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

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