Photo Credit: Ridofranz

Higher cardiovascular health scores on Life’s Essential 8 were linked to a significantly lower risk for psoriasis in a large, cross-sectional study.

Better scores on an American Heart Association multicomponent measure of cardiovascular health were associated with a lower risk for psoriasis in a cross-sectional study published in Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology.

The researchers examined performance on Life’s Essential 8 (LE8), a measure that encompasses four health behaviors (diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, and sleep duration) and four health factors (BMI, blood lipids, blood glucose, and BP).

“LE8 was initially used as an indicator to evaluate cardiovascular health, and the LE8 score is positively correlated with the degree of cardiovascular health,” wrote Xinchang Wang, MD, PhD, and study coauthors. “Some scholars have found that it is applicable as an indicator for other diseases, including chronic kidney disease.”

Several items on the LE8, such as BMI and smoking, have been linked to psoriasis development.

This study was the first to examine the association of LE8 scores with psoriasis in a large, nationally representative sample. The researchers used data from several National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles with information about psoriasis: 2003–2004, 2005–2006, 2009–2010, 2011–2012, and 2013–2014.

Among 13,430 adults included in the analysis, 391 participants had psoriasis, for a prevalence of 2.91% in the study population. Participants with psoriasis had an older average age, a higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease, and significantly lower LE8 scores than those without psoriasis. Their risk for psoriasis decreased as LE8 scores increased.

In an adjusted analysis that divided participants into groups with low, medium, and high LE8 scores, adults with high LE8 scores had a 61% lower risk for psoriasis than adults with low scores. Adults in the medium-scoring group had a 35% lower risk compared with those in the low-scoring group.

Subgroup analyses revealed no significant interactions between LE8 scores and potential confounders including cardiovascular diseases, gender, age, race, education level, marital status, and poverty ratio.

“The results emphasize that LE8 can be applied to clinical practice, help patients and the general population to identify the risk for psoriasis sooner, and minimize the disease burden,” researchers wrote. “The causal relationship and exact mechanism between LE8 and psoriasis should be explored further.”