A Preliminary Clinical Study on 100 Egyptian Psoriatic Patients

Abstract

Mary Fikry Matta and Mahira Hamdy El Sayed

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated, inflammatory condition frequently seen in the clinical practice with a reported prevalence of 0.6 to 4.8 percent in the general population. However, data on psoriasis in Egypt are scarce. So, our aim was to investigate the clinical characterization of psoriasis in 100 Egyptian patients.

Method: One hundred Egyptian psoriasis patients were enrolled in this study. A detailed questionnaire was filled including demographic and clinical aspects of the disease. Some laboratory tests were done to search for associated diseases like diabetes, metabolic syndrome and hepatitis C virus (HCV) and to correlate them with the disease severity. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS version 17.

Results: Thirty seven patients were diagnosed with juvenile-onset psoriasis. There was no significant difference between the mean PASI score for adult versus juvenile onset psoriasis. Pustular psoriasis affected 15% of the patients including children and infants. Metabolic syndrome was absent in juvenile onset psoriatic patients and wasn’t associated with a significantly higher PASI score in the adults affected. PASI score was significantly high in the HCV positive and the hypertensive patients.

Conclusion: Although the study sample is quite small to reach definite judgments on psoriasis in Egypt, yet we noticed that early onset psoriasis is quite a common and challenging disease. Metabolic syndrome is not common in the studied children with psoriasis. Pustular psoriasis is a common entity even in children and infants. HCV is associated with a severe disease and might be an inducing factor for psoriasis.

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