Obese Young Adult Increases the Risk of Having Psoriatic Arthritis

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Recent study reveals that people suffering from psoriasis who are obese at age of 18 have a big chance of developing psoriatic arthritis earlier than normal-weight people with psoriasis.

This type of arthritis affects 6 to 42 percent of people with psoriasis, a skin disorder that is characterized by itchiness or painful reddish patches on the skin.

The new study conducted from 2002 to 2008, were participated by 943 patients with psoriasis in the Utah Psoriasis Initiative. Twenty-six and one-half (26.5) percent of those patients were suffering from psoriatic arthritis. Factors that can tell the possibility that a patient has a psoriatic arthritis includes body mass index (BMI) at age 18, suffered from psoriasis at a young age, being female and psoriasis has affected a larger surface of the body.

Twenty percent of those obese and overweight eighteen-year old participants, developed psoriatic arthritis by age 35, while twenty percent of normal-weight participants developed psoriatic arthritis by age 48.

Dr. Razieh Soltani-Arabshahi and his colleagues announced that patients who are susceptible to psoriatic arthritis will benefit from more frequent and thorough screening procedures for early detection and treatment of psoriatic arthritis, to avoid the development of irreversible damage to joint.