Understanding the Effects of Inflammation over time in Humans: Lessons from Psoriasis

Inflammation is critical to atherosclerosis initiation, progression and complications. The goal of The Laboratory of Inflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases at the NHLBI Intramural Program is to understand how chronic systemic inflammation drives development of cardiometabolic diseases in humans. For the past decade, Dr. Mehta ’ s research program has utilized psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory skin disease, as a model to probe inflammatory, lipid and metabolic pathways associated with atherosclerosis progression. In 2012, Dr. Mehta founded the Psoriasis Atherosclerosis Cardiometabolic Initiative (PACI) at the NHLBI Intramural Program when he was awarded the Inaugural Lasker Clinical Scholar Award from the NIH. Since then, he has followed over 350 patients with psoriasis for at least four years, with very high follow up rates for vascular imaging by coronary CT angiography (CTA) and FDG PET/CT coupled with flow cytometry and in vitro cellular-based immunologic studies. These systematic, serial imaging and laboratory-based studies have provided a powerful framework to understand how inflammation drives coronary plaque progression as compared to coronary artery disease. Dr. Mehta ’ s group has found that poor vascular health begins in psoriasis a decade earlier than in those without psoriasis. Additionally, his team discovered that treatment of skin disease is associated with improvement in vascular disease. When severe psoriasis is treated with biologic therapy in particu...
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