Penicillin for psoriasis

[Guest guest]

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory condition of the skin. Guttate

psoriasis is a rare form that is widely regarded to be provoked by

streptococcus. There's some evidence that common forms of psoriasis

(e.g., " chronic plaque psoriasis " ) are as well:

http://tinyurl.com/23pgdt

This paper:

http://tinyurl.com/yuhe2o

reports on three patients (a very small sample size) whose psoriasis

cleared up when the strep-infected tonsils were removed. If these

results are not due to chance variation, then they suggest that some

forms of psoriais arise when an immune response against strep in the

throat cross-reacts with the skin. I think about 10% of psoriatics

have arthritis, and I wonder if the arthritis is likewise a cross-

reaction.

This paper is most interesting:

http://tinyurl.com/2cg5qr

It indicates that very long term penicillin use is effective for

psoriasis. Unfortunately, the study didn't have a negative control

group.

I didn't investigate this in much detail, so there may be a lot of

research that is more informative. In fact, I barely skimmed the

abstracts. I just thought the last paper would be a good one to add

to the list of papers that argues for long term antibiotics.

Matt