PMID- 9466197
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 19980330
LR  - 20190722
IS  - 0011-9059 (Print)
IS  - 0011-9059 (Linking)
VI  - 36
IP  - 12
DP  - 1997 Dec
TI  - The variable incidence of psoriasis in sub-Saharan Africa.
PG  - 911-9
AB  - BACKGROUND: Surveys of skin disorders have previously provided information about 
      the prevalence and incidence of psoriasis in sub-Saharan Africa; however, the 
      geographic and ethnic trends which may be drawn from these surveys have not been 
      fully described in previous studies, which considered only a fraction of the 
      available data. METHODS: A critical review of clinic-based surveys of psoriasis 
      incidence and population-based studies of psoriasis prevalence is presented. The 
      incidence of psoriasis is adjusted, wherever possible, to factor out the widely 
      variable incidence of infectious skin conditions seen in African skin clinics. To 
      distinguish between genetic and environmental factors that may be responsible for 
      the variability of psoriasis incidence, attention is drawn to climate, human 
      leukocyte antigen (HLA) frequencies, and language groups across the regions 
      surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa. RESULTS: Higher psoriasis incidence rates are 
      consistently observed in eastern Africa than in western Africa, consistent with 
      more limited data on the prevalence of psoriasis in western Africa. Neither 
      rainfall/humidity levels nor HLA frequencies can simply account for these 
      differences; however, the ethnicities of sub-Saharan African peoples may be 
      observed to parallel roughly the trend in psoriasis incidence. Western African 
      countries, such as Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, where lower rates of 
      psoriasis incidence have been reported (less than 1.0% of skin disorders), are 
      populated mainly by non-Bantu-speaking ethnic groups. Bantu-speaking peoples 
      constitute a majority in the populations of most countries in eastern and 
      southern sub-Saharan Africa, where the incidence of psoriasis varies widely. 
      African Americans, whose largely non-Bantu-speaking African ancestry is shared 
      with modern western Africans, also have relatively low psoriasis incidence rates 
      by comparison with North American Caucasians. CONCLUSIONS: Ethnic correlations 
      both within Africa and between North America and Africa suggest that unidentified 
      genetic factors, which differ between eastern and western sub-Saharan Africans, 
      may govern the differential incidence of psoriasis.
FAU - Leder, R O
AU  - Leder RO
AD  - Psoriasis Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA.
FAU - Farber, E M
AU  - Farber EM
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Review
PL  - England
TA  - Int J Dermatol
JT  - International journal of dermatology
JID - 0243704
SB  - IM
MH  - Africa South of the Sahara/epidemiology
MH  - Health Surveys
MH  - Humans
MH  - Incidence
MH  - Prevalence
MH  - Psoriasis/*epidemiology
RF  - 70
EDAT- 1998/02/18 00:00
MHDA- 1998/02/18 00:01
CRDT- 1998/02/18 00:00
PHST- 1998/02/18 00:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 1998/02/18 00:01 [medline]
PHST- 1998/02/18 00:00 [entrez]
AID - 10.1046/j.1365-4362.1997.00251.x [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Int J Dermatol. 1997 Dec;36(12):911-9. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-4362.1997.00251.x.