Epicardial fat tissue in patients with psoriasis:a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Several studies have been performed to investigate the relationship between psoriasis and epicardial fat tissue (EFT). However, the number of patients of every single study is relatively small. OBJECTIVES: We carried out a meta-analysis to evaluate whether EFT is associated with psoriasis. METHODS: A search of PubMed, Ovid Embase, Ovid Medline, the Cochrane Library and Chinese BioMedical Literature Database (CBM) for controlled trials was done from inception to January 20th, 2016. Published trials that included a psoriasis group and a control group without psoriasis with data for at least epicardial fat tissue (EFT) were included. All statistical analyses were conducted using the Stata 12.0 (Stata Corporation, College Station, TX, USA). RESULTS: There were 5 trials involving 731 patients. Patients with psoriasis showed significantly higher EFT than control group (SMD: 0.86, 95 % CI: 0.27-1.46, P = 0.004). CONCLUSIONS: Patients with psoriasis have higher EFT compared to control subjects without psoriasis.