Skin condition linked to depression, anxiety and suicidal feelings
By ANITuesday, August 17, 2010
Washington, August 17 (ANI): A new study has found that individuals with psoriasis, a common immune-mediated skin disease, have an increased risk of depression, anxiety and suicidality.
Shanu Kohli Kurd, and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, studied data from electronic medical records in the United Kingdom from 1987 to 2002.
The analyses included 146,042 patients with mild psoriasis, 3,956 patients with severe psoriasis and 766,950 patients without psoriasis (five control patients for each patient with psoriasis, selected from the same practice and similar entry dates).
“Stated another way, the excess risk attributable to psoriasis is one case of depression for every 39 patients with severe psoriasis per year (or per 87 patients in patients with mild psoriasis per year),” the authors write.
“The excess risks associated with psoriasis for anxiety and suicidality correspond to one case per 123 and 2,500 patients with psoriasis per year, respectively.”
Considering this data and the prevalence of psoriasis in the U.K., the authors estimate that there are more than 10,400 diagnoses of depression, 7,100 of anxiety and 350 of suicidality related to psoriasis each year.
The report has been published in the August issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. (ANI)
