Study: Women Less Likely to Have Severe Psoriasis than Men

Women have a significantly lower incidence of severe psoriasis compared with men, which could help to explain previously-observed gender differences in the utilization of psoriasis care, according to the results of a recent study.

Due to the overrepresentation of men in psoriasis registers and in measurements of the consumption of care, it has been speculated that women may have a lower risk of developing severe psoriasis.
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To examine the sex differences in the severity of psoriasis, researchers conducted a cross-sectional study of data from 5438 individuals experiencing moderate to severe psoriasis from the national registry for systemic treatment of psoriasis in Sweden (PsoReg). The Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) was utilized to measure disease severity.

Overall, women had a statistically significantly lower median PASI score (5.4) than men (7.3). Itemized PASI analyses and adjusted ordinal logistic regressions confirmed that women had significantly lower scores for every area of the body except for the head.

“For more than 70 years it has been speculated that women have less severe psoriasis compared with men. By investigating, for the first time, the sex differences in the severity of psoriasis using the gold standard of severity measurement—the PASI score—and the distinct elements of the PASI score, we were able to corroborate this thesis in a nationwide population. Further research is needed to substantiate this finding in different populations,” the researchers concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Hägg D, Sundström A, Eriksson M, Schmitt-Egenolf M. Severity of psoriasis differs between men and women: a study of the clinical outcome measure psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) in 5438 Swedish register patients [published online March 24, 2017]. doi:10.1007/s40257-017-0274-0.