Incidence rates of comorbidities among patients with psoriasis in the United States

Abstract

Psoriasis is associated with a substantial burden of comorbidities; however, incidence rates (IRs) of these comorbidities following psoriasis diagnosis are not well characterized. Using administrative claims data from the Truven Health Analytics MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Supplemental Databases between January 1, 2002 and September 30, 2015, we compared the incidence of newly diagnosed comorbidities among patients with psoriasis versus demographically matched (birth year, gender, and geographic region) control patients without psoriasis in the United States. Comorbidities of interest were identified using ICD-9-CM codes. A total of 114,824 matched pairs of patients with psoriasis and control patients were included. IRs of all selected comorbidities were significantly higher among patients with psoriasis compared with controls (P<0.05). The most common newly diagnosed comorbidities in both groups were hyperlipidemia (psoriasis versus control, IR per 1,000 patient-years, 127.5 versus 102.8) and hypertension (94.3 versus 80.6). The greatest differences in IRs between patients with psoriasis and controls were observed for rheumatoid arthritis (9.7 versus 3.1; IR ratio [IRR], 3.15) and psoriatic arthritis (24.0 versus 0.2; IRR, 151.57). In this real-world study, patients with psoriasis were more likely to develop new selected comorbidities after diagnosis compared with demographically matched patients without psoriasis.