Alcoholism and Psoriasis

Using criteria for the diagnosis of alcoholism established by the National Council of Alcoholism and by scores on the Self-Administered Alcoholism Screening Test, we compared the prevalence of alcoholism in a group of 99 patients hospitalized for the treatment of psoriasis with that in an age- and sex-matched control group hospitalized for the treatment of other dermatologic disorders. Alcoholism was diagnosed in 11 psoriatic patients and 3 control patients (0.05 less than p less than 0.10); 10 of the 11 psoriatic patients were men, and 1 of the 3 control patients was a man (p less than 0.05). These differences, not noted in certain earlier studies, may reflect a basic association between the two diseases in males or indicate that alcoholism contributes to the morbidity of psoriasis.