Study Finds Increased Risk Of Diabetes In Psoriasis Patients

April Armstrong and a number of her colleagues from the University of California have just completed a review of 27 previous studies on psoriasis and have found a link to diabetes. Psoriasis is a common skin condition that causes redness and itchiness.

Psoriasis has been previously linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular incidents, and strokes with risks running up to 4 times that of normal. This new research indicates that patients who had psoriasis were almost sixty percent more likely to have diabetes than the control portion of the studies. These risks ran even higher if the patient was deemed to have serious or chronic psoriasis. This risk for this group had diabetes was almost double.

Even those psoriasis patients who did not currently have diabetes in the study were at a greater risk than the control group. Tracking these patients over time showed that the patients with psoriasis were almost 30% more likely to develop diabetes. While the cause of the increase risk was not discovered it is highly anticipated that more studies will be conducted in the near future.

Source: Vancouver Sun