Journal of

Background and Aim: Psoriasis vulgaris is a chronic skin disease which is treated by many systemic or topical drugs. There is no cure for this disease and patients have to take medicaments for a long time, so having knowledge on adverse effects of current medicaments may prevent them and improve treatment process. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence of side effects of non biologic systemic drugs in psoriasis.

Methods: In this observational study, we evaluated 200 hospital charts of patients with moderate to-severe psoriasis referred to dermatology clinics of Shohada and Loghman Hospitals in Tehran in 2016. SPSS statistical tools were used to determine the percentage of adverse events. Chi square was used to show the association of gender-related complications and student T-test to evaluate age-related complications.

Results: %56 of patients were male, %26.5 were 25-34 year-old, with mean age of 42±14.2 years and %83.5 of patients had no family history of psoriasis. 11% of patients were hypertensive. Methotrexate was the most commonly used drug and the most common reported adverse event for it was increasing liver function tests (%6.2 in oral and %21.2 in IM injections). The most common reported adverse event for cyclosporine was increased blood pressure which was seen in 17 patients (15.3%). The most common side effect of acitertin was scaling, observed in 11 (%9.6) of patients. There was no relationship between age and sex of patients and development of side effects.

Conclusion: This study showed systemic treatments for psoriasis can change laboratory biomarkers and cause skin eruptions.