19 August 2010
Washington, DC USA
Beer–loving ladies beware! A new study has found that drinking the beverage regularly may raise the risk of psoriasis by over 70% in women.
Psoriasis is an auto–immune disease that causes scaly lesions, redness and inflammation of the skin. According to the World Health Organisation, it affects 2 to 3% of the population. Although doctors aren’t sure of the exact cause of psoriasis, they believe that something triggers the immune system, setting off a chain reaction that causes skin cells to reproduce too quickly, LiveScience reported.
It has long been suspected that alcohol consumption has a role in it. To evaluate the link, researchers led by Abrar Qureshi of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School assessed years of follow–up data from 82,869 women participating in a 1991 study.
The experts found women who reported averaging at least 2.3 drinks of regular beer per week had a 72% greater risk of psoriasis than women who did not drink. However, they also found no association between the disease and light beer, red wine, white wine or liquor. They found that drinking five or more non–light beers per week raised psoriasis risk 1.8 times higher than that of women who drank no beer.
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