Metabolic syndrome in untreated patients with psoriasis: case-control study

Previous studies have shown a higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome in patients with psoriasis compared to controls. However, little attention has been paid to the effect of systemic anti-psoriatic drugs on the metabolic syndrome. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between psoriasis and the metabolic syndrome, by comparing untreated patients with psoriasis and population based control.

We conducted a hospital-based case-control study that included 122 untreated patients with plaque psoriasis and 122 age- and gender-matched controls.

There was no significant difference in the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome between the patients with psoriasis (24.6 %) and the controls (22.9 %) (OR 1.095, 95 % CI 0.607-1.974). Among the components of the metabolic syndrome only hypertriglyceridemia and abdominal obesity were associated with psoriasis. The psoriatic patients with metabolic syndrome had a higher mean age (p =  0.001), and higher mean BMI (p =  0.001) compared with the psoriatic patients without metabolic syndrome. The metabolic syndrome was not associated with the severity of psoriasis.

Untreated patients with psoriasis have no significantly higher prevalence of the metabolic syndrome than healthy controls. Our data suggest that systemic antipsoriatic drugs may play an important role in the pathogenesis of the metabolic syndrome.