[The incidence of atopic symptoms in patients with psoriasis]

Retrospective studies have repeatedly shown that patients with psoriasis rarely suffer from concomitant atopic dermatitis. Recently conflicting results have been published. To see whether the predisposition to psoriasis and that to atopic disease influence each other, we performed a prospective study to investigate the prevalence of atopy in patients suffering from psoriasis. Atopy was diagnosed in 8 of 68 psoriasis patients (11.8%), indicating that its frequency is the same in patients with psoriasis as in the general population. The dynamic aspects of atopic dermatitis, which is mainly a disease of children, and of psoriasis, which is mainly a disease of adults, mean that concomitant manifestation of both entities should be observed in less than 0.01% of the population.