Hypercholesterolemia Associated with Greater Psoriasis Risk

Hypercholesterolemia is linked to an elevated possibility of incident psoriasis, according to a new study.

A team of investigators including researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School studied a total of 95,540 female participants from the Nurses’ Health Study II (1991-2005), with the goal of evaluating whether a history of hypercholesterolemia is associated with the risk of developing psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) in U.S. women.

Study authors relied on information on personal history of physician-diagnosed hypercholesterolemia and related medication use that was collected during a follow-up period. Clinician-diagnosed psoriasis and PsA was ascertained and confirmed by supplementary questionnaires, according to study authors.

The authors documented 646 cases of incident psoriasis and 165 comcomitant PsA cases during 1,320,765 person-years of follow up, and found hypercholesterolemia was associated with a greater risk of incident psoriasis and PsA in multivariate adjusted models.

In addition, participants with hypercholesterolemia duration time of 7 years or more were at a higher risk of developing psoriasis, and the researchers found these associations persisted among participants who never took cholesterol-lowering medications. Study authors found no correlation, however, between cholesterol-lowering drugs and risk of psoriasis or PsA.

The findings originally appeared in Arthritis & Rheumatism.

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Wu S, Li W, et al. Hypercholesterolemia and risk of incident psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis in US women. Arthritis & Rheumatism. 2013.