New Lay Summary - How often do people with palmoplantar pustulosis (PPP) have cardiovascular disease risk factors and other medical conditions?

Palmoplantar pustulosis (PPP) is a rare, debilitating condition, causing painful, red skin with pus-filled lumps on the hands and feet that are difficult to treat. It affects roughly 10 in 100,000 people in the United Kingdom and is a type of psoriasis.

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PPP is closely associated with smoking, but it is not known how frequently people with PPP also suffer from other health conditions, such as heart disease or cancer. This is important because a new class of drugs that we might use to treat PPP, called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors, carry a risk of side-effects which are more common in people with long-term health conditions.

We searched the literature for studies looking at how often people with PPP suffer from health conditions linked to JAK inhibitor side effects. We identified 86 studies involving 233,969 people with PPP. Using statistical methods, we combined these results to produce an overall estimate of how common these health conditions are amongst people with PPP.

We found that over three quarters of people with PPP were current/former smokers (78.2%), and over one quarter had high blood pressure (28.6%), had high cholesterol levels (28.3%), and were obese (25.2%). We also found that types of psoriasis, such as plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, were more common amongst people with PPP than in the general population.

Our findings show that some long-term health conditions are common amongst people with PPP. It is important for clinicians looking after people with PPP to assess whether these conditions are present, as this can inform discussions about different treatment options and the associated risks and benefits.

The full paper is available online here: https://doi.org/10.1111/jdv.20766

Written by David Gleeson