FRIDAY, Jan. 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Low cardiovascular fitness in late adolescence is associated with an increased risk for incident psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis among men, according to a study published online Jan. 11 in PLOS ONE.
Marta Laskowski, from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and colleagues examined the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and risk for onset of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis in a cohort of Swedish men in compulsory military service between 1968 and 2005.
The researchers identified 20,679 cases of incident psoriasis and 6,133 cases of incident psoriatic arthritis among 1,228,562 men during a median follow-up of 31 years (mean age at baseline, 18.3 years). A significant association was seen between low cardiorespiratory fitness and incident psoriasis (hazard ratio, 1.35) and psoriatic arthritis (hazard ratio, 1.44).
“Low fitness was already known to boost the risk of incurring cardiovascular disease, and psoriasis as such is linked to raised cardiovascular disease risk, too,” Laskowski said in a statement. “The results from our study confirm the reasons for assessing people’s fitness early in life, to identify individuals at a higher risk for adverse health outcomes later in life.”
