Patients with psoriasis might be at increased risk for hospitalized pneumonia

SAN FRANCISCO – Patients with psoriasis appeared to be at increased risk for pneumonia requiring hospitalization, according to late-breaking research presented at the American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting.

“Psoriasis, overall, is associated with an approximately 30 percent increased risk of pneumonia requiring hospitalization, independent of other risk factors for such as smoking, drinking, comorbid diseases, and pneumonia vaccination,” researcher Junko Takeshita, MD, PhD, told Healio.com/Dermatology. “The risk of hospitalized pneumonia increases with greater psoriasis severity.”

Junko Takeshita

Takeshita and colleagues conducted a cohort study of 200,461 patients with psoriasis and 962,296 patients without psoriasis who were part of The Health Improvement Network, a database of electronic records collected at primary care clinics in the United Kingdom. Moderate-to-severe psoriasis was determined in 12,445 of the patients based on receiving phototherapy or systemic therapy. A diagnostic code for pneumonia within 30 days of hospitalization was used to identify hospitalized pneumonia.

Psoriasis was associated with an increased risk of hospitalized pneumonia (hazard ratio=1.30; 95% CI, 1.20-1.41), according to multivariable Cox regression analyses that was adjusted for age, sex, smoking and drinking status, systemic corticosteroids, vaccinations and comorbidities.

Patients who were receiving therapy consistent with moderate-to-severe psoriasis had a greater risk of hospitalization, which increased for those patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis.

There was a similar association between moderate-to-severe psoriasis and greater frequency of hospitalized pneumonia in a subgroup of patients whose psoriasis severity was determined by a general practitioner based on body surface area (BSA) involvement (<3% BSA), according to exploratory analyses (P trend=.05). – by Bruce Thiel

For more information:

Takeshita J. F025: Late‐breaking Research: Clinical. Presented at: American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting; March 20-24, 2015, San Francisco.

Disclosure: Takeshita reports grants and research funding from Pfizer.