Clinical Nuances of Psoriasis in Darker Skin

There are important differences in and misconceptions about the prevalence, clinical presentation and treatment of skin of color versus Caucasian psoriasis patients.
Andrew F. Alexis, M.D., M.P.H., chairman of dermatology at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West and director of the Skin of Color Center at Mount Sinai Health System, New York, N.Y., presented on the topic of psoriasis in skin of color at The Skin of Color Seminar Series, held April 30 and May 1 in New York City.
For starters, psoriasis is not as rare in skin of color as once thought.
“Older epidemiologic studies suggested that the prevalence was very low among African Americans and others of African ancestry,” Dr. Alexis says. “That has since been refuted with more recent studies that have shown the prevalence to be much higher than what was previously reported. That being said the prevalence of psoriasis among African Americans is still less than that of Caucasians.”
In a study published March 2014 in Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD), researchers found that psoriasis prevalence was 3.6 percent among Caucasian U.S. adults, versus 1.9 percent among U.S. African Americans and 1.6 percent among Hispanics.
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