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Belly Fat Linked To Psoriasis

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on May 29, 2025.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, May 29, 2025 — Belly flab appears to be a stronger warning sign for psoriasis than fat located elsewhere on the body, a new study says.

Fat around the abdomen is more strongly linked to psoriasis risk that total body fat, particularly in women.

“Our research shows that where fat is stored in the body matters when it comes to psoriasis risk,” lead researcher Dr. Ravi Ramessur, a dermatologist at the St. John’s Institute of Dermatology at King’s College London, said in a news release.

Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition in which the body overproduces new skin cells, churning them out in days rather than weeks, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.

The overabundant cells pile up, creating thick, scaly patches that itch like the dickens.

Many people with psoriasis have excess weight, and it’s well-established that increasing levels of body fat raise a person’s risk of psoriasis, researchers said in background notes.

However, it hasn’t been clear if the fat distribution on a person’s body matters when it comes to psoriasis risk, researchers said.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 330,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank, a large-scale health research project, including more than 9,000 people with psoriasis.

The team examined 25 measures of body fat using traditional methods and advanced imaging techniques to see how each was associated with psoriasis.

It turned out that measures like waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, and MRI measures of abdominal fat were the strongest predictors of psoriasis risk, results show.

“Central fat — especially around the waist — seems to play a key role,” Ramessur said. “This has important implications for how we identify individuals who may be more likely to develop psoriasis or experience more severe disease, and how we approach prevention and treatment strategies."

These links were even stronger in women, with abdominal fat more clearly linked to psoriasis, researchers added.

“We were surprised by how consistently strong the association was across different central fat measures and how much stronger the effect was in women,” Ramessur said. “The observed links between central body fat and psoriasis suggest that there may be underlying biological mechanisms contributing to the disease that are not yet fully understood and which warrant further investigation."

These results also show that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound might be a means of protecting against psoriasis, Dr. Joel Gelfand, director of the Psoriasis and Phototherapy Treatment Center at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, said in a news release.

“The strong relationship between psoriasis and obesity and the emerging promise of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists for reducing psoriasis morbidity is a call to action for large scale clinical trials of GLP1RA monotherapy for treatment of psoriasis,” Gelfand wrote in an editorial that accompanied the study findings.

“Our current paradigm of just focusing on the skin and joint manifestations when treating psoriasis is outdated in the context of our evolving understanding of the tight relationship of psoriasis, obesity, and cardiometabolic disease,” Gelfand added.

The new study, published May 27, appears in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

Sources

  • Elsevier, news release, May 27, 2025

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted May 2025

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