Psoriasis has been making headlines the past couple years, pretty much solely thanks to Kim Kardashian West, who suffers from the skin condition. With this added publicity, more and more people have become aware of what the condition is and how to keep it under control. Now, there’s a new study that links psoriasis to two specific gut disorder—Chron’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
According to the study published by JAMA Dermatology, people with psoriasis are two times more likely than the general population to develop Chron’s disease and ulcerative colitis, both of which are inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).
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The link between psoriasis and IBD could be due to the same genes, which previous studies have suggested. Also, they’re both chronic conditions that happen because of the immune system. With psoriasis, the immune system becomes overactive and leads to an unusually fast development of new skin cells. For IDB, the immune system responds and reacts to environmental triggers that it wouldn’t usually react to, which leads to inflammation in the gut.
Researchers looked at nine previous studies, which involved more than seven million people to gather their information. They found that those with psoriasis were 2.5 times more likely to develop Chron’s disease and 1.7 times more likely to develop ulcerative colitis.
Further studies will be needed to explain exactly why these two are linked, with researchers also saying they’ll need more studies to prove that IBD and psoriasis share common causes. We’ll update this post if more information becomes available.
