MedWire News: Research suggests that the likelihood of developing psoriasis is increased in people who have experienced negative traumatic experiences during childhood or adulthood.
Negative traumatic experiences do not appear to increase the severity of psoriasis, however, Edita Simonic and colleagues from the University of Rijeka in Croatia, report.
The researchers enrolled 100 patients with psoriasis and 101 individuals with skin conditions considered to be "non-psychosomatic, who served as controls. All the participants completed the Traumatic Antecedents Questionnaire, which measures positive personal experiences (competence and safety) and negative personal experiences (neglect, separation, secrets, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, trauma witnessing, other traumas, and exposure to alcohol/drugs).
Patients with psoriasis more often experienced negative traumatic life events and had overall higher scores for negative experiences than controls, with significant differences seen for secrets (mean 4.97 vs 4.42), emotional abuse (4.94 vs 4.39), and exposure to alcohol/drug abuse (4.68 vs 4.19).
The amount of positive experiences did not differ between the two groups, with the exception of significantly lower safety scores in patients compared with controls (mean 8.87 vs 10.53).
The researchers also report that negative experiences were more common in psoriatic patients across all developmental periods, compared with controls, with the highest level of difference seen during latency and adulthood.
"Negative traumatic experiences during childhood and adulthood might cause some emotional damage with high rates of physical and mental health problems," the team writes in The Journal of Dermatology.
"It is well known that in almost one-third of psoriatic patients the disease appears by the age of 15 years. It is possible that negative traumatic events during late childhood and adolescence along with emotional immaturity might represent a trigger for early onset of psoriasis."
When the researchers compared psoriatic patients with early and late onset, they found that those with early onset had experienced significantly higher amounts of emotional abuse, alcohol/drug abuse, secrets and other traumas during latency, adolescence, and adulthood than the controls.
In contrast, patients with late-onset psoriasis reported a higher level of traumatic events in early childhood and latency compared with early-onset patients and controls.
"Our results suggest that childhood and adulthood negative life events coupled with the lack of positive experience could have increased the vulnerability to psoriasis onset," Simonic et al comment.
They conclude that his might also be "connected to difficulties in expression of emotions and coping strategies."
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