Relation between metabolic syndrome and psoriasis: A multicenter, hospital-based, case-control study from West Bengal, India

Abstract

Introduction: Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory, immune-mediated skin disease affecting approximately 2-3% of the global population. Besides traditional co-morbidities associated with psoriasis, an emerging co-morbidity is metabolic syndrome. Psoriasis and metabolic syndrome are likely linked together due to underlying chronic inflammatory nature of psoriasis, in large part, to the increased tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Aim: To study the association between psoriasis and metabolic syndrome and its components. Materials and Methods: A case-control, hospital-based multicenter study was designed including 173 consecutive psoriatic patients and 184 nonpsoriatic subjects as control during a period of 2 years. In this study, we statistically compared the components of metabolic syndrome (using National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel criteria) in case and control groups. Results: Out of 173 psoriatic patients, there were 91 men (52.6%) and 82 women (44.56%); and in the control group, there were 93 men (50.54%) and 91 women (49.45%). We found a higher proportion of psoriatic patients having features of metabolic syndrome compared to the control group (40.46% vs. 22.28%), the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.0001). Prevalence of obesity in terms of waist circumference (p = 0.001) and body mass index (p = 0.001), and dyslipidemia (p = 0.004) were significantly associated with psoriasis, whereas prevalence of hypertension (p = 0.11) and diabetes (p = 0.93) were not associated with psoriasis. Conclusion: Psoriasis is statistically positively associated with metabolic syndrome in our study.