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New study finds psoriasis twice as common among African-Americans as previously believed, but internet mum on Blacks with psoriasis
(February 7, 2005) A new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD) has demonstrated that psoriasis is twice as common among African-Americans as previously believed. The findings come as Psoriasis Cure Now! released a new report indicating that psoriasis among African-Americans receives little attention on the World Wide Web. In light of these findings, the psoriasis advocacy group today wrote the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), NIH’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and other leaders urging greater research and education on psoriasis.
“Psoriasis can make anyone feel isolated, so I can only imagine how it must be for African-Americans with the disease,” said Michael Paranzino, president of Psoriasis Cure Now! “From half a million to three-quarters of a million African-Americans battle psoriasis, yet you would never know it from surfing the web. We must do better.”
According to the Psoriasis Cure Now! report, while the three leading internet search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) have indexed an average of nearly 3.5 million web pages that mention psoriasis, those pages include only an average of 28,000 that mention both psoriasis and African-Americans, an average of just 0.8%. Similarly, of the first 500 pictures indexed under “psoriasis” on each of those leading search engines, an average of just 4.7 are of Black people, an average of just 0.9% of the psoriasis-related images on the web.
“The JAAD study shows that psoriasis is in fact common among African-Americans,” Paranzino continued. “And the data also hint that there may be disparities in psoriasis severity between whites and African-Americans. We need further research to confirm these possible differences and investigate whether they result from a genetic basis, a difference in access to health care, or other causes.”
The JAAD study, conducted by a team lead by Joel M. Gelfand, MD of the University of Pennsylvania, found that 1.3% of African-American adults have been diagnosed with psoriasis, versus 2.5% of Caucasian adults. However, the previous best estimate was that only 0.7% of African-Americans had psoriasis.
Psoriasis Cure Now! focuses on increasing research and access to treatments for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis patients.
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