Statistics indicate that about a third of people with psoriasis suffer from inflammation in the joints as a result of the severity of the inflammation caused by the disease in the body.
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About a third of people with psoriasis have arthritis
Psoriasis is a highly complex chronic autoimmune disease. Doctors usually focus on reducing its symptoms due to a lack of understanding of how the disease works, which can lead to serious health problems in advanced cases.
Usually, the patient is treated according to the degree of the disease, which can appear suddenly, especially after the thirties for many reasons, such as environmental pollution and untreated infections, or since birth as a result of genetic factors.
Statistics indicate that about a third of people with psoriasis suffer from inflammation in the joints as a result of the severity of the inflammation caused by the disease in the body, noting that international statistics show an increase in the number of people with psoriasis by about 3 million people each year.
Psoriasis cases are treated according to the degree of their severity, starting with diluted topical ointments that contain cortisone, tar, vitamin D, or salicylic acid, or through immunosuppressive pills that have side effects that require medical examinations, at frequent intervals, or from During a biological injection, the patient is injected with live cells in advanced cases of the disease. Treatment with a specific type of ultraviolet rays is also available in specialized clinics.
However, not all treatments provide a radical solution, and may fail completely in view of the nature of the disease, or it can be partial and temporary in the best cases, in addition to that its side effects are not underestimated in some cases.
From here, the study, conducted by an Austrian medical team at the University of Vienna, derives its importance as it highlights, for the first time, a link that may explain the cause of psoriasis, and the accompanying infections on the skin level.
A study led by Professor Arwin Wagner, a geneticist and oncologist at the University of Vienna, has shown that the severity of psoriasis and the resulting arthritis can be reduced by inhibiting the S100A9 gene in all cells of the body, rather than focusing on cell immunosuppression only at the skin level.
The qualitative study revealed that psoriasis symptoms disappear when the S100A9 gene is inactivated in all cells of mice. This is the first time that scientists have identified a direct link between the disease and a gene inside the body.
Professor Wagner said: “We now know that inflammatory responses in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis are enhanced when only S100A9 is inhibited in skin cells. Therefore, S100A9 inhibitory drugs should be administered systemically in the form of tablets or drops.”
This discovery opens the door to testing the production of inhibitors of the gene that causes the disease, and the development of treatments that work at the level of the whole body, not just the skin.