Psoriasis patients may be at higher risk of developing chronic kidney disease

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease that has been associated with metabolic and cardiovascular comorbidities, specifically in young patients and patients with more severe forms of the disease. Recent studies have also linked psoriasis to kidney disease. However, studies assessing the association between psoriasis and the risk of CKD have reported conflicting results. Furthermore, no research has been done on the causal nature of the possible association.

Xianding Wang, Department of Urology/Institute of Urology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, and colleagues aimed to explore the association between psoriasis and the risk of chronic kidney diseases by conducting a population-based cross-sectional study and Mendelian randomization analysis.

They used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The potential association between psoriasis and CKD risk was estimated using Logistic regression analyses. Further, the causality was evaluated by performing a Mendelian randomization analysis using large-scale genome-wide association studies of psoriasis and CKD. Inverse variance-weighted (IVW) analysis was used as the primary method. 16 750 participants were included in the observational study.

The study led to the following findings:

• 39 of 429 patients with psoriasis had CKD (9.1%) compared with 1481 of 16 321 without psoriasis (9.1%).
• In the fully adjusted model, psoriasis was not associated with CKD (OR: 0.77).
• Thirty-six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected as instrumental variables in the MR analysis.
• The IVW analysis reported that genetically predicted psoriasis was associated with a higher risk of CKD (OR: 1.025).
• After removing 2 SNPs associated with heterogeneity, the association remained (OR: 1.028).

Genetically predicted psoriasis was associated with a higher risk of CKD. This association may be important for clinicians to monitor kidney function and prescribe potentially nephrotoxic drugs during psoriasis management.

Reference:

Yin, S., Zhou, Z., Wu, J., Wang, X., & Lin, T. (2023). Psoriasis and risk of chronic kidney diseases: A population-based cross-sectional study and Mendelian randomization analysis. Nephrology, 28(11), 611-619. https://doi.org/10.1111/nep.14220