Patients with Severe Psoriasis May Have Another Concern: Chronic Pancreatitis

Patients afflicted with severe psoriasis may be at higher risk for chronic pancreatitis (CP).

While psoriasis has long been linked to various comorbidities like cardiovascular disease, chronic renal diseases, and diabetes, only a handful of small studies and case reports have explored the relationship with CP.

As such, to evaluate the risk of CP in a large group of Chinese patients, researchers used the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database to examine the medical records of 48,430 psoriasis patients and 193,720 controls.

After an average 6.6 years of follow up, the team noted the incidence of CP in psoriasis patients was almost twice that of the control group, which rose depending on the severity of psoriasis.

However, in a study published in PLoS One, investigators did find that using nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs could benefit these patients and lower this risk.

The authors concluded, “…Our nationwide study demonstrated that patients with psoriasis are at a significantly elevated risk of CP and the risk increased with severity of psoriasis. CP was thought to have a complex aetiology and the increased development of CP in patients with psoriasis was multifaceted and may be the result of several ongoing processes, including chronic inflammation in psoriasis, drugs, autoimmune pancreatitis, and genetic and behavioral risk factors.”