Researchers in China report that global incidence rates of psoriasis rose slightly from 1990 to 2021 and are projected to continue rising for both men and women through 2050.
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that continues to impose a growing global burden. Understanding the rate of increase is critical for informing public health strategies, improving health care access, and supporting early diagnosis worldwide.
In the study, “Global Psoriasis Burden and Forecasts to 2050,” published as a Research Letter in JAMA Dermatology, researchers used a time-series forecasting analysis to project global psoriasis incidence through 2050 and to address age, sex, and regional differences in burden.
Analyses included age-standardized incidence rates, regional patterns in crude incidence and prevalence, and associations between psoriasis burden and Sociodemographic Index.
Psoriasis data from 1990 to 2021 were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021, including age-, sex-, and region-specific rates for incidence, prevalence, and disability-adjusted life-years across 236 countries.
Shifting incidence worldwide
Global psoriasis burden had a slight overall increase from 1990 to 2021. Age-standardized incidence rates for male individuals rose from 56.89 to 62.77 per 100,000, a 10.3% increase, and for female individuals rose from 57.08 to 61.26 per 100,000, a 7.3% increase.
Forecasts based on data through 2021 projected age-standardized incidence rates rising to approximately 70 per 100,000 in male individuals and 66 per 100,000 in female individuals by 2050.
In 2021, the difference in age-standardized incidence rates between male and female individuals was small, at about 1.5 per 100,000, with both sexes showing gradual increases over time.
Sensitivity analyses that excluded 2021 from model fitting produced a lower and nearly flat projected increase for male individuals, with wider prediction intervals, while projections for female individuals were similar to the main analysis, and underlying reasons for these differences require further investigation.
Geographic analysis revealed global variations in psoriasis burden, with North America and Western Europe showing the highest crude incidence and crude prevalence rates. East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa showed lower estimated burdens, with a caveat of limited data availability and potential underascertainment in some settings.
Age-specific incidence by sex showed similar gender differences in children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 years, with female rates slightly higher until around ages 25–29 where rates are the same. From that point on, incidence in males increases much more significantly.
Interpreting global estimates
Data quality varied across countries, and no standardized registry, coding, or health care-use measures existed across settings, so regional comparisons are estimates that might not reflect physical conditions.
Crude incidence and prevalence do not capture individual severity, environmental and lifestyle factors such as pollution and diet were not modeled. Trend forecasts to 2050 may not account for changes in diagnosis, access to care, or treatment efficacy. Increased diagnosis may coincide with clinical awareness and treatment options, as most of the current systemic psoriasis drugs were brought to market after 2013.
Higher burden in high-income regions could fit with a number of scenarios, from reporting levels and attitudes of clinical concern to a hygiene theory in which the sanitary conditions of a high-income modern society have backfired upon ill-equipped immune systems. Or the data could be the signature of a food ingredient that has slowly edged rates higher over time.
Unfortunately, even with global data in hand, intriguing results remain just that. Interesting, but uncertain, and entirely unactionable.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-psoriasis-globally-highest-burden-wealthier.html
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