VIDEO: Expert discusses characteristic features of psoriasis

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Psoriasis is a condition that as dermatologists, we're trained to recognize just by looking at the skin. Psoriasis has very characteristic features. We can tell by the color. It often has a very red or almost like a pink salmon-like color. The rash of psoriasis is usually very well-defined. You can see where it starts and where it stops. The borders are very clear.

It's often thick. It often has, like, you know, this white scale to it. There are some locations that sometimes give us clues that the condition is likely to be psoriasis, like presence of the plaques in the elbows, and knees, the scalp, sometimes in the creases of the genitals, the creases of the skin folds in the underarms and the groin. Those are common areas of psoriasis. We often don't need any sort of lab tests, blood tests, or skin biopsies to diagnose psoriasis.

Very rarely do we do that or have to do that. It's only in certain situations where it's maybe looking like a different condition, and we need to do a biopsy to distinguish between psoriasis and something else. But typically speaking, again, it's a very easy diagnosis that can be made just by looking at the skin.