Study Links Psoriasis to NMSC in Women

Psoriasis was associated with a higher risk of nonmelanoma skin cancer in women in a new study published in Nature Communications.

“An observational and genetic investigation into the association between psoriasis and risk of malignancy” found higher risks of a total of 16 types of cancer associated with psoriasis, including causal associations with breast cancer and lung cancer. The authors used observational and genetic data from the UK Biobank, obtaining GWAS summary data, eQTL analysis data, TCGA data, and GTEx data from public datasets. They performed an observational phenome-wide association study (PheWAS), polygenic risk score analysis, and one-sample and two-sample Mendelian randomization analyses to investigate the potential causal associations between psoriasis and cancers.

In the PheWAS, psoriasis was “significantly associated with a higher risk” of nonmelanoma skin cancer—the 10th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) code C44, hazard ratio (HR) 1.11, 95% CI:1.08-1.88—in women, though in men the association remained consistent with the overall population.