Psoriasis and Risk of Adverse Cardiovascular Outcomes

According to a recent study in the journal, Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, although several studies have explored associations between psoriasis and adverse cardiological outcomes and have suggested psoriasis to be a risk factor for adverse events, “the relationship has become uncertain with the emergence of many new studies.” The study’s lead author, Lu Liu, and colleagues from the Cancer Institute of The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University in Shijiazhuang, China, conducted an analysis wherein they concluded that “psoriasis is associated with all adverse cardiovascular outcomes of interest, especially in severe patients.”

Their conclusions were based on a meta-analysis of 31 cohort studies on psoriasis and adverse cardiovascular outcomes, encompassing 665,009 patients with psoriasis and 17,902,757 controls. Outcomes were assessed with random-effect models and a pooled analysis of various cardiovascular outcomes.

According to the article, “the pooled analyses according to each cardiovascular outcome revealed that pooled [rate ratio (RR)] of patients for developing myocardial infarction, stroke, cardiovascular death, ischemic heart disease, thromboembolism and arrhythmia were 1.17 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11–1.24), 1.19 (95% CI, 1.11–1.27), 1.46 (95% CI, 1.26–1.69), 1.17 (95% CI, 1.02–1.34), 1.36 (95% CI, 1.20–1.55), and 1.35 (95% CI, 1.30–1.40), respectively.” Conversely, in patients with mild and severe psoriasis, the pooled RR for adverse cardiovascular outcomes were 1.18 (95% CI, 1.13–1.24) and 1.41 (95% CI, 1.31–1.52), respectively.

In closing, the authors proposed that their findings “suggested that psoriasis may be an independent risk factor for all adverse CVE, which requires more attention from clinicians.