People with psoriasis are far more likely to develop diabetes, according to a sweeping new analysis of 27 studies involving some 314,000 individuals.
The findings, published online in the Archives of Dermatology, suggest people with the scaly skin condition should be more aggressively screened for the blood sugar disorder that predisposes patients to heart disease, said University of California-Davis researchers who conducted the review.
"Our investigation found a clear association between psoriasis and diabetes," said lead researcher April Armstrong, assistant professor of dermatology at UC-Davis. "Patients with psoriasis and their physicians need to be aware of the increased risk of developing diabetes so that patients can be screened regularly and benefit from early treatment."
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For the new study, Armstrong and her colleagues analyzed 27 studies, in what is known as a meta-analysis. Five of the studies assessed how many patients with psoriasis developed diabetes during the course of a study, which ranged from 10 to 22 years. The other studies how many patients already had diabetes at the outset of a study. Altogether, the studies evaluated more than 314,000 people and compared them to 3.7 million individuals without the disease.
The results showed that patients with mild psoriasis are 1.5 times more likely to have diabetes than the general population while those with severe disease are nearly twice as likely
"The large sample size and consistent association between psoriasis and diabetes make these study findings very strong and suggest an underlying physiological link between the two diseases," said Armstrong, who directs the Dermatology Clinical Research Unit at UC-Davis.
While more studies are needed to understand how the two diseases are associated, Armstrong said immune factors may make psoriasis patients more susceptible to diabetes.
"We know patients with psoriasis and hypertension tend to require more aggressive therapy to bring their blood pressure under control," said Armstrong. "We also know that psoriasis patients have higher rates of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular-related deaths than the general population. Primary-care physicians need to be aware of these underlying predispositions to disease to provide the best care to their patients."
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