A clinical and epidemiological study of psoriasis and its association with various biochemical parameters in newly diagnosed cases.

BACKGROUND: There has been a lot of recent search on consideration of psoriasis as a systemic disease, with researchers being of the view that dermatological manifestations represent only a part of the spectrum. Although, there have been plenty of studies from the west reporting an association of psoriasis with the metabolic syndrome, there are no large-scale Indian studies evaluating Asian patients. The present study is an endeavour in this regard.

AIM: To investigate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in Indian patients with newly diagnosed psoriasis at the onset of the disease.

METHODS: The study is a prospective clinical case control study, with 100 patients of psoriasis and 100 age-matched healthy controls. 5ml plain venous blood after overnight fasting was obtained by venepuncture. Plasma glucose was tested by glucose oxidase method. Serum cholesterol and triglycerides was estimated by enzymatic method. Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed by the presence of three or more criterion of the National Cholestrol Education Programme's Adult Panel (ATP). The statistical software SAS 9.2 and SPSS 15.0 was used for the analysis of the data.

RESULTS: Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed in 8 out of 100 cases and 9 out of 100 controls (p-value: 0.811). We did not find any association of psoriasis with metabolic syndrome in our study. The age of onset of the disease, the duration of the disease and the severity of the disease activity were also not found to be associated with the likelihood of developing metabolic syndrome.

CONCLUSION: Our study refuted any association of psoriasis with metabolic syndrome at the onset of disease activity in Indian patients. The plenty of reports from west approving such an association can be explained by increased risk factors like smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity and stress levels. Further, most such studies have been conducted with patients on treatment, while ours is the first study on newly diagnosed patients prior to the initiation of any therapy.