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 hospitafaed for the treatment of other dermatologic disorders. Alcoholism was diagnosed in 11 psoriatic patients and 3 control patients (0.05 < p < 0.10); 10 of the 11 psoriatic patients were men, and 1 of the 3 control patients was a man (p < 0.05). These differences, not noted in certain eariier studies, may reflect a basic association between the two diseases in males or indicate that alcohotem contributes to the morbidity of psoriasis.