Cardiovascular Comorbidities in Patients with Psoriasis: Risk Profile Including Carotide Ultrasonography Assessed in Hospital-based Case Control Study

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease and its comorbidities have attracted serious interest in recent years. The evidence that psoriasis is associated with systemic inflammation and significantly higher incidence of cardiovascular risk factors was already described. The results of published studies are highly variable, the conclusions are ambiguous and further epidemiological studies are needed for validation of published data. Therefore, we initiated a project aimed at identifying the carriership of cardiovascular risk factors including early stages of atherosclerosis that represent important comorbidities in patients with psoriasis. We carried out a hospital-based case-control study. 189 patients with chronic plaque psoriasis were enrolled as cases. The group consisted of 378 patients with other skin diseases complying with the same restriction criteria were recruited to the study as the controls. All participants underwent physical examination, blood tests, measuring of blood pressure, waist circumference. Furthermore, in the subset of 117 cases and controls (matched 1:2) with no history of cardiovascular disease we evaluated the intima-media thickness (cIMT). The results show higher prevalence of hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, waist circumference, weight, BMI and CRP level in patients with psoriasis than in controls. These parameters have been clearly demonstrated as risk factors for the development of cardiovascular diseases. The associations among psoriasis and diastolic blood pressure, BMI value and LDL cholesterol are statistically significant in the binary data logistic model as well. cIMT in patients  compared to controls was not significant.</p

Chromosomal Aberrations in Lymphocytes of Healthy Subjects and Risk of Cancer

There is evidence that increased frequency of chromosomal aberration (CA) in peripheral blood lymphocytes is a predictor of cancer, but further data are needed to better characterize CA as marker of cancer risk. From the archives of 15 laboratories we gathered cytogenetic records of 11,834 subjects who were free of cancer at the moment of blood drawing and who underwent cytogenetic examination for preventive purposes in the Czech Republic during 1975–2000. We linked these records to the national cancer registry, revealing a total of 485 cancer cases. Subjects were classified according to the percentiles of CA distribution within each laboratory as low (0–33rd percentile), medium (34–66th percentile), and high (66–100th percentile). Subjects were further classified by occupational exposure and by subclass of CA. We found a significant association between the overall cancer incidence and the presence of chromosome-type aberrations [relative risk (RR) for high vs. low CA level = 1.24; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.03–1.50] but not chromatid-type aberrations. Stomach cancer showed a strong association with frequency of total CA (RR = 7.79; 95% CI, 1.01–60.0). The predictivity of CA observed in subjects exposed to various classes of carcinogens did not significantly differ from the group of nonexposed subjects. This study contributes to validation of CA as a predictive marker of cancer risk, in particular, of stomach cancer; the association between CA frequency and cancer risk might be limited to chromosome-type aberrations

Cardiovascular Comorbidities in Patients with Psoriasis: Risk Profile Including Carotide Ultrasonography Assessed in Hospital-based Case Control Study

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease and its comorbidities have attracted serious interest in recent years. The evidence that psoriasis is associated with systemic inflammation and significantly higher incidence of cardiovascular risk factors was already described. The results of published studies are highly variable, the conclusions are ambiguous and further epidemiological studies are needed for validation of published data. Therefore, we initiated a project aimed at identifying the carriership of cardiovascular risk factors including early stages of atherosclerosis that represent important comorbidities in patients with psoriasis. We carried out a hospital-based case-control study. 189 patients with chronic plaque psoriasis were enrolled as cases. The group consisted of 378 patients with other skin diseases complying with the same restriction criteria were recruited to the study as the controls. All participants underwent physical examination, blood tests, measuring of blood pressure, waist circumference. Furthermore, in the subset of 117 cases and controls (matched 1:2) with no history of cardiovascular disease we evaluated the intima-media thickness (cIMT). The results show higher prevalence of hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, waist circumference, weight, BMI and CRP level in patients with psoriasis than in controls. These parameters have been clearly demonstrated as risk factors for the development of cardiovascular diseases. The associations among psoriasis and diastolic blood pressure, BMI value and LDL cholesterol are statistically significant in the binary data logistic model as well. cIMT in patients  compared to controls was not significant.</p

Chromosomal aberration frequency in lymphocytes predicts the risk of cancer: results from a pooled cohort study of 22 358 subjects in 11 countries

Mechanistic evidence linking chromosomal aberration (CA) to early stages of cancer has been recently supported by the results of epidemiological studies that associated CA frequency in peripheral lymphocytes of healthy individuals to future cancer incidence. To overcome the limitations of single studies and to evaluate the strength of this association, a pooled analysis was carried out. The pooled database included 11 national cohorts and a total of 22 358 cancer-free individuals who underwent genetic screening with CA for biomonitoring purposes during 1965–2002 and were followed up for cancer incidence and/or mortality for an average of 10.1 years; 368 cancer deaths and 675 incident cancer cases were observed. Subjects were classified within each laboratory according to tertiles of CA frequency. The relative risk (RR) of cancer was increased for subjects in the medium [RR = 1.31, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.07–1.60] and in the high (RR = 1.41; 95% CI = 1.16–1.72) tertiles when compared with the low tertile. This increase was mostly driven by chromosome-type aberrations. The presence of ring chromosomes increased the RR to 2.22 (95% CI = 1.34–3.68). The strongest association was found for stomach cancer [RRmedium = 1.17 (95% CI = 0.37–3.70), RRhigh = 3.13 (95% CI = 1.17–8.39)]. Exposure to carcinogens did not modify the effect of CA levels on overall cancer risk. These results reinforce the evidence of a link between CA frequency and cancer risk and provide novel information on the role of aberration subclass and cancer type