Psoriasis: gastric surgery relieves psoriasis

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People with psoriasis have flaky, itchy, and inflamed skin. After a so-called gastric bypass surgery, which was performed to lose weight, the skin complaints of those affected improved.

"We have seen a significant reduction in symptoms in patients who have lost significant weight," says Soumya Reddy of New York University. The researcher and her team had observed 86 psoriasis sufferers over a period of six years who had undergone gastric bypass surgery. 21 of them also suffered from psoriatic arthritis, which also affects the joints. Those patients who had lost a lot of weight benefited the most.

Less fat, less inflammation

The explanation for the seemingly surprising phenomenon: adipose tissue produces messenger substances that stimulate inflammatory processes in the body. And these in turn fuel the psoriasis symptoms.

And that affects quite a few psoriasis. In fact, a Danish twin study has shown that people with psoriasis are more likely to be overweight and have more diabetes than people without the skin condition. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen suspect that genetic similarities favor the skin disease as well as obesity and diabetes.

Relieved discomfort

Back to the gastric bypass study. Here the symptoms of the psoriasis patients were reduced on a scale from 1 to 10 on average from 5.6 to 4.4. In patients with particularly pronounced skin complaints, they even fell from 7.7 to 5.7 points. Participants with pronounced psoriatic arthritis benefited from the strongest. The joints on the hands and feet, but also on the spine, become inflamed. For them, the score on the complaint scale fell from 8.2 to 4.8. On average, the patients had lost almost half their weight in the six years after the procedure.

Lose weight even without surgery

Psoriasis alone is unlikely to be a sufficient reason for gastric bypass surgery. Because that goes hand in hand with considerable restrictions. Operational complications threaten significant digestive problems and deficiency symptoms. In severely obese people with psoriasis, the expected improvements could be an additional argument in favor of the procedure. Regardless of this, it can be assumed that obese psoriatric patients could benefit from losing weight even without gastric surgery. (cf)

Sources:

Monica Sethi et al .: Clinical Improvements in Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis with Surgical Weight Loss, Arthritis Rheumatol. 2015

Joel M. Gelfand: Psoriasis, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, and Obesity. JAMA Dermatology, 2016; DOI: 10.1001 / jamadermatol.2016.0670

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