The importance of illness severity and multimorbidity in the association between mental health and body weight in psoriasis:Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis

Abstract Background High body weight is common in psoriasis and is associated with depression and anxiety. Past studies are mostly cross‐sectional and may underestimate the role of demographic and illness‐related factors in the association between mental health and body weight in psoriasis. Objectives This study explored the association between depression and anxiety with waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) cross‐sectionally and at 12 months follow‐up, adjusting for demographic and illness‐related factors in people with psoriasis. Method Routine psoriasis care data were combined with data on depression and anxiety from a large specialist psoriasis centre. The analytical samples consisted of patients with complete data on either waist circumference (N = 326 at time 1; N = 191 at follow‐up) or BMI (N = 399 at time 1; N = 233 at follow‐up) and corresponding mental health, demographic, and illness‐related information. Associations between weight‐related outcomes and mental health variables were assessed at time one and at 12 months follow‐up, after adjusting for demographic and illness‐related factors. Results We found no evidence of associations between mental health and waist circumference or BMI, after adjusting for age, gender and illness‐related factors. Higher age, male gender and illness‐related factors, specifically multimorbidity and psoriasis severity, were positively associated with waist circumference and BMI at both time points. Conclusion This study revealed the important role of factors related to illness severity in body weight in psoriasis. The contribution of depression and anxiety to weight was not observed here likely due to the sample and methodology used. Future work should explore other psychosocial factors such as weight‐related attitudes and emotional eating in the context of weight in psoriasis, to help inform the development of successful weight‐management treatments

Differences in Systemic Oxidative Stress Based on Race and the Metabolic Syndrome: The Morehouse and Emory Team up to Eliminate Health Disparities (META-Health) Study

Abstract available at publisher's website

Rare Variant Analysis of Human and Rodent Obesity Genes in Individuals with Severe Childhood Obesity

Obesity is a genetically heterogeneous disorder. Using targeted and whole-exome sequencing, we studied 32 human and 87 rodent obesity genes in 2,548 severely obese children and 1,117 controls. We identified 52 variants contributing to obesity in 2% of cases including multiple novel variants in GNAS, which were sometimes found with accelerated growth rather than short stature as describedw previously. Nominally significant associations were found for rare functional variants in BBS1, BBS9, GNAS, MKKS, CLOCK and ANGPTL6. The p.S284X variant in ANGPTL6 drives the association signal (rs201622589, MAF∼0.1%, odds ratio = 10.13, p-value = 0.042) and results in complete loss of secretion in cells. Further analysis including additional case-control studies and population controls (N = 260,642) did not support association of this variant with obesity (odds ratio = 2.34, p-value = 2.59 × 10-3), highlighting the challenges of testing rare variant associations and the need for very large sample sizes. Further validation in cohorts with severe obesity and engineering the variants in model organisms will be needed to explore whether human variants in ANGPTL6 and other genes that lead to obesity when deleted in mice, do contribute to obesity. Such studies may yield druggable targets for weight loss therapies