What Health Risks Are Associated with Psoriasis?

Many people with psoriasis may also have other conditions like psoriatic arthritis. In this video, Taz Bhatia, MD pediatrician and founder of CenterSpring MD discusses this and other autoimmune diseases that may be related to psoriasis.

Transcript

00:00

Psoriasis is not directly associated with another health risk, meaning if you get psoriasis,

00:06

we don't automatically worry that something's going to happen to your heart or to your lungs or to your organs, or things like that.

00:12

There is one condition, psoriatic arthritis, that many people will get if they also have psoriasis. And that again is on that spectrum

00:20

of autoimmune or inflammatory diseases. Speaking of which, the one thing that I think about the most when I see somebody with psoriasis

00:27

is that there is usually sometimes a secondary autoimmune disease lurking in the shadows. So for example, you have psoriasis

00:34

or you have psoriatic arthritis, but then we also need to be thinking about lupus, or rheumatoid arthritis, or even Hashimoto's thyroiditis, but all

00:42

of these autoimmune diseases that can coexist together. So I think it's very important if you have psoriasis to really do an exhaustive search

00:49

for any other autoimmune disease. The other thing we've really seen a lot of in practice is that psoriasis is associated with a lot

00:55

of gut-based illnesses, so everything from abdominal pain to reflux to constipation to IBS, and then

01:02

finally to IBD, or inflammatory bowel disease. You know, there is a link that we've seen over and over again

01:08

with psoriasis. And I think the common thread with all of it is that psoriasis is a disease of inflammation.

01:14

It is a disease of the immune system. So if there's not an attempt to get to the root or to the core of what's driving that inflammatory process,