Abstract
Psoriasis is a worldwide chronic inflammatory disease, involving both skin and joints. In order to characterize psoriasis in Han Chinese population, we conducted this nationwide prospective and hospital based survey, in which 56 hospitals with departments of dermatology participated, located in 33 cities across China. A total of 12,031 outpatients with psoriasis were registered during 2009 to 2010, which the data was collected by standard questionnaires. The main data acquisition included demographics, family history, disease status and other comorbidities. Physical and dermatological examination, including body surface area (BSA) and psoriasis area severity index (PASI) were applied to evaluate the disease severity. Descriptive statistics, 2 tailed t-test and chi-square test were used appropriately for the statistical analysis. From the study, we found that the male and female ratio of the patients was 1.49:1. Mean age of onset was 30.2 ± 14.5 years for males and 27.1 ± 15.6 years for females (P < 0.05). Scalp was the most common onset site (52.8%), The mean PASI was 18.70 ± 10.01, indicating that most patients presenting at the hospitals had moderate-to-severe psoriasis and the majority was psoriasis vulgaris (96.5%). Among 12,031 patients, 23.1% had a family history of psoriasis,16.1% had comorbidities, and 29.9% had nail changes. The most important aggravation factor was season change (60.2%), followed by psychological stress (34.5%), and there significant differences between genders on trigger factors. In conclusion, this study characterizing psoriasis in Han Chinese population, could be used as basic data for future study.
Highlights
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with a strong hereditary component [1]
Only two population-based studies were conducted in China in 1984 and 2012, respectively [16, 17]. These two studies report a lower prevalence of 0.12% and 0.47% of psoriasis in China, but details of clinical feature are less described
There is lack of population-based detailed descriptive study on clinical characteristic of psoriasis patients all over the world. This manuscript report a nationwide study focusing on clinical features, phenotypes, comorbidities, and etc. in the Han Chinese population
Summary
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with a strong hereditary component [1]. It is a heterogeneous disorder with considerable differences in age of onset, morphological appearance and location, severity, comorbidity, and response to established treatments [2]. HLA-Cw2 and −B27 [3] Environmental factors play important roles in the pathogenesis of psoriasis. Triggering factors like smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, infections, stress and certain medications were found to be important for the initial manifestation and/or disease flares. Chronic plaque psoriasis is the most common type. About 18% to 21% of patients with psoriasis have distinctive nail changes, and nearly11.2% to 14.3% develop seronegative inflammatory arthritis
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