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. 2020 Oct:143:109853.
doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109853. Epub 2020 May 19.

May COVID-19 outbreaks lead to a worsening of skin chronic inflammatory conditions?

Claudio Marasca  1 , Angelo Ruggiero  2 , Maddalena Napolitano  3 , Gabriella Fabbrocini  2 , Matteo Megna  2
Affiliations

May COVID-19 outbreaks lead to a worsening of skin chronic inflammatory conditions?

Claudio Marasca et al. Med Hypotheses. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

The emergence of the novel betaCoronavirus has raised serious concerns due to the virus rapid dissemination worldwide. Many areas throughout the world are now experiencing the COVID 19 outbreaks with government and policy authorities taking many aggressive isolation or restriction measures, drastically reducing also patient's visits and limiting only to the most urgent ones such as oncological visits or emergencies. Several studies have demonstrated a relationship between increased weight, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and inflammatory skin diseases. Furthermore, weight loss interventions have been shown to improve psoriasis, as well as hidradenitis suppurativa, and increase responsiveness to treatment of this conditions. We suppose that due to aggressive isolation or restriction measures, in the next future dermatologist will face with a common worsening of chronic skin inflammatory conditions due to reduced physical activities, increased intake of calories with the derived increase body weight and always more frequent treatment discontinuation. It is time to start potential preventive strategies which could limit the expected negative impact of COVID-19 related quarantine on skin diseases.

Keywords: Covid19; Inflammatory skin conditions; Obesity; Overweight.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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