Associations Between Psoriasis and Endocrine Diagnoses in a Tertiary-Center Electronic Health Record Database: A...

Psoriasis is associated with systemic comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease. The purpose of this study is to assess whether patients with psoriasis are more likely to also have endocrine disorders.

Using the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Synthetic Derivative, a de-identified database of more than 3.4 million patients, a cross-sectional study was conducted. PheWAS codes were used to identify patients with specific diagnoses.

The control cohort consisted of 3389683 patients (54.9% female) and the psoriasis cohort consisted of 10855 patients (55.5% female). The prevalence of several endocrine disorders was found to be higher in those with psoriasis than without, including Cushing's disease (0.322% vs 0.056%, age-adjusted odds ratio = 5.078, 95% CI = 3.650-7.066, p < 0.001), adrenal insufficiency (1.179% vs 0.225%, age-adjusted odds ratio = 4.388, 95% CI = 3.680-5.232, p < 0.001), hypothyroidism (10.567% vs 2.373%, age-adjusted odds ratio = 3.839, 95% CI = 3.607-4.085, p < 0.001), hyperthyroidism (1.704% vs 0.422%, age-adjusted odds ratio = 3.378, 95% CI = 2.919-3.910, p < 0.001), etc.

These results suggest that patients with psoriasis may also be at risk for endocrine dysfunction. The consequences of systemic inflammation in patients with psoriasis may extend beyond metabolic disorders such as cardiovascular disease, and further investigation into the association between endocrine disorders and psoriasis may lead to improvements in the clinical management of the latter.