Assessment of Serum Fibroblast Growth Factor 21 as a Risk Factor for the Occurrence of Cardiometabolic Disorders among Psoriatic Patients

Abstract

soriasis is a common and chronic inflammatory skin disease whose exact pathogenesis remains uncertain. Nowadays, research focuses not only on understanding the genesis of skin lesions but especially on the explanation of systemic disorders associated with psoriasis. Elevated risk of the occurrence of chronic inflammatory diseases in psoriatic patients, such as IBD, NAFLD, DM, obesity, or MS has been proven in various studies. Understanding the connection between the inflammatory state, psoriasis progression and severity, as well as the cardiometabolic dysfunction leads to more research for new markers of inflammation that would provide a tool for early diagnosis and discovery of new therapeutic methods for the systemic complications. Currently the use of fibroblast growth factor, namely (FGF21), is considered a promising approach to assess the risk and diagnose the presence of psoriasis-related cardiometabolic abnormalities. The aim of the present work is to evaluate the serum level of FGF21 in psoriatic patients versus healthy controls and to correlate it with the disease severity (PASI Score), BMI, metabolic parameters. We included 30 patients with plaque psoriasis and 30 matched age, sex and BMI apparent healthy controls.