Authors

1 Kirkuk General Hospital

2 Department of Medicine, Medical College, Tikrit University

Abstract

Introduction: Psoriasis is a chronic, common, immune-mediated inflammatory disease that affects the skin, joints and nails. Nail involvement is very common in the course of psoriasis; Psoriasis can involve any element of the nail apparatus-nail bed or matrix, or both. Resulting a disturbance in the nail morphology (pitting, leukonychia, onycholysis, subungual hyperkeratosis, oil spot) and nail dystrophy, the psoriatic nails lose their natural preventing barrier and therefore are more predisposed to fungal infections. Onychomycosis is fungal infection of nails caused by yeasts, dermatophyte and nondermatophytemoulds. Psoriatic patients with nail changes more liable to invasion by fungal elements than psoriatic patients without nail changes. Objective: To assess the frequency of onychomycosis in psoriatic patients nails due to the presence of predisposing nail changes to fungal elements infection. Materials and Methods: The nail specimens were prepared by scrubbing and clippings from the 30 psoriatic patients with nail changes and another 30 without nail changes. The nail specimens were taken from each patient undergoes 2 laboratory examinations: direct Result: Totally, we studied 60 psoriatic patients (30 men and 30 women). The mean age was 24.5±13.7years. The most common clinical form of psoriasis was psoriasis vulgaris (85%) and (15%) Arthropathic psoriasis. The percentage of positive mycology in psoriatic patients with nail changes 21(70%) is higher than; the group of psoriatic patients without nails changes 10(33.3%). The fungal agents, which isolated in this study, were Yeast like fungi (candida spp.) and Non Dermatophyte Moulds (NDM). Conclusion: This study revealed statistically significant relation between nail psoriasis and mycological results were the P-value= 0.037.

Keywords