The impact of diet on psoriasis

Because psoriasis is a chronic and inflammatory disease, many patients seek alternative therapies and lifestyle modifications to supplement their treatments and help relieve symptoms. Both the disease and the modifications are multifactorial, making it difficult to quantify the effectiveness of a single change. A review of the available literature reveals that most diets have mixed impacts on psoriasis, though some individual foods have seen more prominence in studies. Foods and supplements with systemic anti-inflammatory effects seem to have a higher chance of improving psoriasis symptoms. Overall, additional large-population studies with a higher statistical power are needed to review these studies. We suggest web-based national cohort surveys as a possible method to quickly gather a large amount of data for future studies.