Psoriasis is a risk factor for MS

Egeberg A, Mallbris L, Gislason GH, Skov L, Hansen PR Risk of Multiple Sclerosis in Patients with Psoriasis: A Danish Nationwide Cohort Study. J Invest Dermatol. 2015 . doi: 10.1038/jid.2015.350.

Psoriasis and multiple sclerosis (MS) are inflammatory disorders with similarities in genetic risk variants and inflammatory pathways. Limited evidence is available on the relationship between the two diseases. We therefore investigated the risk of incident (new-onset) MS in patients with mild and severe psoriasis, respectively. All Danish citizens aged ≥18 years from January 1, 1997 to December 31, 2011 were identified by linkage of nationwide registries at the individual level. We estimated incidence rate ratios (IRRs) adjusted for age, gender, socio-economic status, smoking, medication, comorbidity, and ultraviolet phototherapy, by Poisson regression. There were 58,628 and 9,952 cases of mild and severe psoriasis, and 9,713 cases of MS, respectively. Incidence rates (IRs) of MS per 10,000 person years for the reference population, mild psoriasis, and severe psoriasis were 1.78, 3.22, and 4.55, respectively. Adjusted IRRs of MS were 1.84 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.46 to 2.30), and 2.61 (95% CI 1.44 to 4.74) in mild and severe psoriasis, respectively. Similar results were observed when adjustment for family history of MS was included in the analyses. Psoriasis may confer a disease severity-dependent risk of MS
So this study says that if you have an increased risk of psoriasis (an autoimmune skin disease) you have an increased of MS. This is not new and if you have one autoimmune disease you may get two. This is because your genetics predisposes you to enhanced immunity, this may mean you are great at getting rid of infections but you run the risk of autoimmunity. We could see an increased risk of thyroid disease also .

This reminds me of when I was a young whipper-snapper and working on skin....I wanted to get a paper into J. investigative dermatology as an ambition. I had applied to go to present my work in Amsterdam, as a young phD student and that would mean the abstract would be published in J Invest Dermatology. 

I had spent the year or more trying to support dogma and found that it just didn't work out that way, so my conclusions were anti-dogmatic and to my shock the abstract was rejected. 

So without work to present, my bosses would not let me go to the meeting (first trip outside the UK)...gutted and a cynical barsteward was born.  However, this taught me to accept negative data and if the experiment is done properly I have no problem with negative data...it can make you work to find out why it was negative and that can turn into a positive..

I wonder if some labs are afraid to present their bosses with negative data that doesn't fit the bosses thought process. 
I know this happens

Anyway it turned out that the dogma was based on a pack of loose cards and years after I had got my work published the man from the science mafia who created the dogma published a paper saying the dogma only worked in some mouse strains and not others and ignored my paper in a different specieis, which suggested that the dogma was the exception not the rule!

So basically dogma was a pile of mushroom food...

Yesterday we heard blood transfusion causes Alzheimer's (was it just autoimmunity to transferred human brain products) from the man that predicted many years ago that we are all going to die of prion disease.  

That reminds me of another story. This man was wearing a white suit to a drinks reception that I was at...There was a guy who used to get a bit tipsy after one babycham and was worse the wear. He was drinking red wine and spilt it on this guys white trousers. He was so drunk he got on his knees and was trying to wipe the red wine off....whilst actually smearing it all over.....hilarious

Labels: