Increased Cause-specific Mortality in Patients with Mild and Severe Psoriasis: A Population-based Swedish Register Study

Abstract

Several studies have shown excess risk for a number of comorbidities in patients with psoriasis compared with the general population, but data on cause-specific mortality in this patient population are limited. The aim of this study was to estimate the associations of psoriasis and 12 specific causes of death and all-cause mortality in patients with mild and severe psoriasis. The study was based on data from Swedish administrative registers and compared the risk of death in 39,074 patients with psoriasis with 154,775 sex-, age- and residency-matched referents using Cox proportional hazards models. In patients with mild and severe psoriasis, the strongest associations were observed for deaths due to kidney disease (hazard ratio [HR]=2.20, p<0.01) and liver disease (HR=4.26, p<0.001), respectively. Whilst cardiovascular disease was the main driver of excess mortality in absolute terms, the risks for other causes of death were also substantially elevated in patients with psoriasis compared with matched referents.