Psoriasis Linked to Beer Consumption; Gluten to Blame?

A spate of recent headlines advertised a link researchers found in this study between the autoimmune disease psoriasis and non-light beer consumption. Women who drank non-light beer - but not those who drank light beer, wine or liquor - were 1.76 times as likely to develop psoriasis than other women. The researchers speculated that the gluten in the barley was to blame.

In addition, more new research found celiac disease-associated antibodies in patients with psoriasis. In a study that appeared in April 2010, researchers compared 56 psoriasis patients with 60 controls and found significantly higher levels of celiac disease antibodies in the psoriasis patients. The study concluded that some of those patients with psoriasis likely also had latent celiac disease.

These new studies provide more evidence linking celiac disease and psoriasis, both of which are autoimmune diseases. Patients with celiac disease have a higher risk of being diagnosed with other autoimmune diseases.

As an aside, I've never been diagnosed with psoriasis (celiac disease remains my sole autoimmune diagnosis), but for years prior to my celiac diagnosis I suffered from horribly itchy, scaly dandruff, which completely disappeared when I went gluten free. The dandruff comes back for a day or so if I've been glutened, and I sometimes experience itchy, scaly red plaques elsewhere on my skin if the glutening was severe. Barley seems to be a particular culprit for these symptoms of mine ... so the study linking beer consumption with psoriasis doesn't surprise me in the least.