Pharmacological treatment of cardiovascular risk factors in patients with psoriasis: A Danish nationwide study

Guidelines recommend awareness of cardiovascular (CV) risk in patients with psoriasis.1-4 However, patients with psoriasis might still be pharmacologically undertreated for CV risk factors.5-7 This study examined if patients with psoriasis were more likely to be pharmacologically treated for the CV risk factors hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) following the introduction of Danish guidelines on handling such patients.

The study was designed as a registry-based cohort study, identifying all adults with CV risk factors in Denmark from 2010 to 2018. CV risk was defined as having a minimum of one in- or out-patient hospital diagnosis of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia or T2DM. Psoriasis was defined by a hospital diagnosis of psoriasis or according to two consecutive filled prescriptions of calcipotriol restricted to be before the diagnosis of CV risk factors. Patients with psoriasis and any of the measured CV risk factors were age and sex matched with four individuals with corresponding CV risk factors from the general population. Patients treated for CV risk were defined as those with prescriptions claimed up to 6 months before a diagnosis of CV risk factors and up to 12 months after discontinuing therapeutic indications aimed at CV risk factors and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Differences in treatment for CV risk factors were compared with chi-square, relative risk (RR) for unadjusted models and multiple logistic regression (OR) adjusted for covariates.