According to a new study, women suffering from the chronic skin condition psoriasis might be at higher risk of getting diabetes and high blood pressure.

"We knew there was some association between psoriasis and diabetes and high blood pressure," says Abrar Qureshi, MD, MPH, assistant professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School and a dermatologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. "The question was, which came first."

The study has been published in the April issue of the Archives of Dermatology.

Qureshi and colleagues surveyed 78,061 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study II. The study first collected data in 1989 from more than 116,000 women (all registered nurses) and followed up with questionnaires regarding their health every two years.

At the commencement of the study all these women were free of diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2005, the women reported if they had ever gotten psoriasis diagnosed from a doctor. Leaving out the women who already had diabetes or hypertension, the researchers focused on 78,061 women, including 1,813 with a diagnosis of psoriasis. These women were found to be 63 percent more likely to develop diabetes and 17 percent more likely to develop hypertension than those who were psoriasis-free.

The team concluded that inflammation can lead to high blood pressure and may also be a factor in insulin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition.