In general, the prevalence of venous thrombo- embolism (VTE) is significantly increased in patients with psoriasis when compared with those without the condition, according to a study published in Annals of Medicine. Investi- gators conducted a systematic electronic search of the incidence of VTE (pulmonary embolism [PE], deep venous thrombosis [DVT] and/or ret- inal vein occlusion [RVO]) in psoriasis patients) in three medical literature databases. Among seven included articles, each separately indi- cated a correlation between psoriasis and VTE after adjustment for several clinical parameters. While these confounders differed between the seven studies, each included adjustment for age, gender, and comorbidities. A meta-analysis of the unadjusted data of five studies that report- ed raw data on the number of VTE events and patient follow-up (person-years) showed a pooled risk ratio for VTE and psoriasis of 1.29 (95% CI: 0.92-1.81). The statistical hetero- geneity was high, with an I2 of 97%. “Both psoriasis severity and number of confounders assessed seem to have an impact on this correla- tion,” wrote the study authors. “In this review, we pooled unadjusted data of the studies and we found a non-significant increased risk for VTE in psoriasis patients compared to healthy con- trols. This discrepancy suggests that psoriasis severity, age, gender or comorbidities may influ- ence the risk of VTE in subgroups of the psori- asis population. Future research to identify sub- groups at risk for VTE is warranted.”

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