Originally published January 26 2006
Rome study finds psoriasis often worsens with tobacco use
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
In Rome, Cristina Fortes, Ph.D., and colleagues have found that the risk of severe psoriasis increases with patients who suffer from the skin disease and smoke a pack per day.
Psoriasis joins the list of offenses committed on the body by cigarette smoking.
People with psoriasis and a one pack-a-day smoking habit have twice the risk of having severe psoriasis compared with less frequent smokers or non-smokers, according to a cross-sectional study reported in the December issue of the Archives of Dermatology.
The effect is particularly significant among women, who have a 72% greater risk for having severe psoriasis if they are current or recent smokers, compared with women who never took up the habit, according to Cristina Fortes, Ph.D., and colleagues of the Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico, in Rome and the University of Montreal.
"The results of this study suggest a negative effect of cigarette smoking on the severity of psoriasis, in particular in women," the authors wrote.
The study was part of a larger project focused on the clinical and epidemiologic features of psoriasis and on its effects on patients' emotional well being and quality of life.
Trained dermatologists evaluated the patients clinically for severity of psoriasis and collected demographic and socioeconomic information, as well as information on their smoking history and clinical variables, including body mass index (BMI).
The main outcome was psoriasis severity measured by the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI), as scored by a senior dermatologist during the early hours of hospital admission, prior to the start of therapy.
The mean age of the 505 men and 313 women in the study was 46.8 � 16.0 years, and the mean PASI score was 8.6 � 5.9.
When the researchers took lifestyle and demographic factors into account, they found that two or more glasses of alcohol per day doubled the risk of severe psoriasis, and that family history of psoriasis was also associated with greater risk of disease severity.
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