A new study by Bo Ri Kim and team has revealed that systemic antipsoriatic treatment is related with a reduction in the risk of cardio-cerebrovascular disease (CCVD) in people with psoriasis, indicating that this form of medication may assist to halt the progression of CCVD in this patient population. The findings of this study were published in the Journal Of Dermatology.
The impact of antipsoriatic treatment on cardiovascular disease is little understood. In order to explore the effect of systemic antipsoriatic treatment on CCVD in psoriasis patients, researchers conducted a population-based nested case-control study. Patients with newly diagnosed psoriasis were identified using countrywide cohort data from the Korean National Health Insurance Claims database. The development of CCVD events (ischemic heart disease, cerebral infarction, myocardial infarction, and cerebral hemorrhage) after enrolment was studied among the enrolled subjects. The proportion of the treatment period with systemic antipsoriatic therapy throughout the study period was computed to assess the effect of systemic antipsoriatic therapy on CCVD risk.

The key findings of this study were:
Overall, the trial researchers reported that 251,813 individuals were involved, with 6,262 of them having CCVD events over the study period (CCVD arm).
The non-CCVD arm consisted of 245,551 people who had no history of CCVD during the research period.
Surprisingly, the non-CCVD arm used systemic antipsoriatic therapy (PTP) for a larger proportion of the treatment time than the CCVD group.
After adjusting for gender, age, hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia in a multiple logistic regression analysis, the PTP was found to have an inverse relationship with the risk of CCVD.
The researchers discovered that a 10% rise in PTP resulted in a significant 0.96 decrease in the probability of developing CCVD.
Furthermore, both traditional antipsoriatic medication and biologic therapies were proven to reduce the risk of CCVD.
In conclusion, the use of systemic antipsoriatic medication was found to be inversely related to the risk of CCVD in psoriasis patients. These data showed that systemic antipsoriatic medication might minimize the development of CCVD in psoriasis patients.
Reference:
Kim, B. R., Lee, K. H., Kim, J., Kim, J. W., Paik, K., Myung, W., Lee, H., Choi, C. W., & Youn, S. W. (2023). Association between cardio‐cerebrovascular disease and systemic antipsoriatic therapy in psoriasis patients using population‐based data: A nested case–control study. In The Journal of Dermatology. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1111/1346-8138.16904