Smoking tied to higher psoriasis risk

LONDON. February 3. KAZINFORM The findings, based on a study of thousands of people and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, do not prove that smoking causes psoriasis in some people -- but it is clear the smoking came before the skin condition, said senior researcher Abrar Qureshi.

"I think if there's one message, it's that for now, smoking seems to be a risk factor for new-onset psoriasis," added Qureshi, at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.  

Experts believe psoriasis is caused by an abnormal immune system attack on the body's own cells, and some studies have suggested that smokers are more vulnerable, possibly because smoking can affect immune activity.

But most research has looked at people only at one point in time, which makes it hard to be sure the smoking came before the psoriasis.

For the current study, researchers used data from three large, long-running studies of US health professionals, following nearly 186,000 men and women for 12 to 20 years.

Of those, 2,410 developed psoriasis during that time.

People who were current smokers at the study's start were almost twice as likely as lifelong non-smokers to develop psoriasis. Past smokers had a 39 percent higher risk than non-smokers, Kazinform refers to China Daily.