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Psoriasis could be a signal to an impending heart attack

12/Oct/2006: A new study has found that psoriasis, an immune-mediated disease that affects the skins and joints, could be a signal of a looming heart disease.

The study found that people suffering from psoriasis, which makes the skin scaly, dry and itchy, are at higher risk of developing heart ailments. The findings of this study, reported in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’, says that psoriasis elevates the chances of heart attack.

Joel Gelfand, a dermatologist at University of Pennsylvania, who led this study, said that psoriasis could lead to heart attack in some individuals, especially if they suffer from a severe form of the disease. He added that the risk of heart diseases in psoriatic patients is as high as the risk of heart diseases in diabetics.

Gelfand and his team analyzed health records of nearly 700,000 British adults between the ages 20 and 90, for this study. They found that the highest risk of heart attacks among the psoriatic patients were in younger adults and in people suffering from severe forms of psoriasis.

For example, the risk of heart attack in a 30-year old person with a mild psoriatic condition was 30% higher than a patient without psoriasis and almost the same as a 60-year old person suffering from a sever form of the disease.

Psoriasis affects about 3% of the adult population and it is a result of the abnormal activity of the body’s immune system. Psoriasis is triggered by emotional stress, skin damages like sunburns, alcoholism and some medication, which activates the immune system of our body. The immune system some times over-reacts to such triggers, flooding the skin with chemicals that cause dry, itchy and scaly-red patches on the skin’s surface.

Gelfand said that such chemicals released by the immune system affects the arteries, narrowing them down and reducing the blood supply to the heart, which may result in a heart attack. Thus immune diseases could lead to coronary heart diseases and eventually to myocardial infarction.

He added that the findings of this study compliments many other studies, which have already shown that chronic immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, could increase the risk of heart attacks. He recommends that psoriatic patients should control the other risk factors associated with heart diseases, like diabetes, hypertension, smoking and overweight.

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