A CROSS-SECTIONAL RESEARCH ON THE PSORIASIS (A SKIN DISORDER) PATIENTS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF LIFE QUALITY IMPAIRMENT AND DISEASE SEVERITY

Objective: Our research aimed at the correlation determination between Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) and Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) in the patients diagnosed with psoriasis.

Study Design: Cross sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: We included indoor and outdoor cases presented to Allied Hospital, Faisalabad (Department of Dermatology) in the time of six months starting from October, 2016 to April, 2016.

Material and Methods: Our research sample was of 155 chronic plaque psoriasis cases which were clinically diagnosed with an age bracket of (20 – 80 years) of both the genders. We observed clinical outcomes and brief history of every patient for DLQI and PASI and subsequently documented it on the prescribed proforma. Data analysis was carried out on SPSS software. We calculated various qualitative and quantitate variables for the outcomes presentation in tabular and pictorial form which include age, gender, DLQI and PASI. Mean DLQI and PASI were also calculated for the Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) calculated as (+1 & -1) with a significant p-value of (< 0.05). We calculated stratification correlation and completed our stratification for gender and age.

Results: In the total research population male and females were respectively 110 males (70.97%) and 45 females (29.03%). The age bracket in the research about the research participants was from (20 – 80 years). The mean age factor of the participants was observed as (49.5 ± 15.6) years. Mean PASI & DLQI were respectively observed as (27.92 ± 5.83) and (11.46 ± 4.22). Pearson correlation coefficient (r) value was observed as (0.1324) representing a weaker relation between DLQI and PASI with a significant p-value of (0.100). In the age bracket of (51 – 80) years we found a weaker correlation (r = -0.3394); whereas, in the age bracket of (20 – 50) years correlation was very weak as (r = -0.0651). Males were also observed in terms of weak correlation of the DLQI and PASI having correlation values in males and females respectively as (r = 0.132) and (r = 0.461).

Conclusion: We conclude that DLQI and PASI has a weak correlation as observed in the outcomes of this particular research study.

Keywords: Psoriasis, Association, Quality of life, PASI, DLQI, Weak Correlation and Mean values.