Root cause research

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by Guest Posts on Mon Oct 07, 2019 10:12 am

Root cause research

Why is there so much research into pharmaceutical intervention, just very little into the root cause of psoriasis (which is still largely unknown)? Lianne
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Dr Thiviyani Maruthappu
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by Dr Thiviyani Maruthappu on Thu Oct 10, 2019 8:50 pm

Re: Root cause research

Thank you for your interesting question. We think of psoriasis as a multifactorial disease which makes it harder to pinpoint an exact root cause, and environmental triggers such as stress or streptococcal infections also play a role. However, over the last 10-15 years there have been several advances in our understanding of the disease, particularly discovery of the genes that we think contribute to its development. Large-scale genetic studies of patients with and without psoriasis has been able to identify over 60 genes that increase the likelihood of developing psoriasis in some patients. These studies have led to the development of new drugs that we now use to treat both psoriasis and psoriatic arthropathy. However, in many patients we still do not know what the cause or trigger is and this is the focus of much needed ongoing research.

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