Dyslipidemia in psoriasis: as a risk for cardiovascular disease

Background: Psoriasis is a common and recurrent proliferative inflammatory skin disease that has been associated with abnormal plasma lipid metabolism and with high frequency of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The prevalence seems to be related to the severity of psoriasis, as it occurs more frequently in patients presenting with large areas of the body affected with lesions. The aim of our work was to evaluate the development of dyslipidemia in psoriasis, and to look for a correlation between their levels and severity of diseases in which the risk factors and secondary causes of hyperlipidemia were excluded. Methods: We evaluated the fasting lipid profile in twenty-four patients with mild to moderate psoriasis and twenty-four age and gender matched healthy subjects as the control group. Results: Patients presented risk changes in lipid profile, serum total cholesterol (p<0.001), triglyceride (p<0.01), LDL-cholesterol (p<0.001), VLDL-cholesterol (p<0.01) and TC/HDL ratio (p<0.01) were found to be significantly higher than in control group. No significant statistical difference was observed between HDL levels of the two groups. Significant positive correlation in total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol was found between mild and moderate psoriasis (PASI score) as compared with controls. Conclusion: Our data suggest that psoriasis patients must be considered as a group at high risk for cardiovascular, since psoriasis per se seems to be associated with risk changes in the lipid profile. We conclude that psoriatic patients should be evaluated and followed up for the risk of hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular diseases. [Int J Res Med Sci 2013; 1(2.000): 53-57]