NEW YORK - Findings from a
new study suggest that psoriasis may be an independent risk factor for heart
attack, particularly in young individuals with severe psoriasis.
"Our findings are novel and therefore it is important that additional studies
be performed to confirm these results and determine their therapeutic
implications," the researchers comment. "In the meantime, as part of good
medical care, patients with psoriasis should be encouraged to aggressively
address their modifiable cardiovascular risk factors."
Psoriasis is a "T-helper cell disease" and heart attack has been linked to
such diseases, Dr. Joel M. Gelfand, from the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, and colleagues explain in the Journal of the American Medical
Association.
Research has, in fact, supported a link between psoriasis and cardiovascular
disease, but all of it has come from hospital-based studies that did not control
for known cardiovascular risk factors.
To address these issues, Gelfand's group conducted a population-based cohort
study to examine the risk of heart attack in patients with and without
psoriasis, after adjusting for high blood pressure, diabetes, lipid
abnormalities, and other heart risk factors.
The study involved 127,139 patients with mild psoriasis, 3,837 with severe
psoriasis, and 556,995 controls. They were follow-up period was 5.4 years.
Over an average of 5.4 years, the heart attack rate in the control group was
2.0 percent, while the rates in the mild and severe psoriasis groups were 1.8
percent and 2.9 percent, respectively. The corresponding incidences per 1000
person-years were 3.58, 4.04, and 5.13.
The association between psoriasis and heart attack risk becomes weaker with
age, the report indicates. For example, the presence of mild or severe psoriasis
in a 30-year-old patient raised the risk of heart attack by 1.29- and 3.10-fold,
respectively. In a 60-year-old patient, by contrast, the corresponding risks
were elevated just 1.08- and 1.36-fold.
