Increased levels of estrogen that occur during pregnancy may be associated with improvement in psoriasis, according to a study in the May issue of Archives of Dermatology.
Anecdotal reports have suggested that psoriasis tends to improve during pregnancy, according to background information in the article. The current study investigated prospectively how psoriasis fluctuates in pregnancy and correlated progesterone and estrogen levels in pregnancy with psoriatic change.
Jenny E. Murase, M.D., of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues compared changes over the course of one year in psoriatic body surface area in women with psoriasis in a group of 47 pregnant women and a control group of 27 non-pregnant pre-menopausal women. The women reported on their stress level, perceived psoriatic severity and the extent of their body surface affected by psoriasis five times over the course of the year: pregnant women at 10, 20 and 30 weeks gestation, and six and 24 weeks after birth and the control group at baseline, 10, 20, 36 and 54 weeks following enrollment. Hormone levels at each assessment were determined for 19 of the pregnant women.