What kind of disease is psoriasis? This question is believed to have many different answers among different people. From the patient's perspective, many patients compare psoriasis to a chronic cancer that is incurable, causing despair and seriously affecting image and quality of life. For ordinary people, psoriasis is thought to be a contagious "tinea" disease, it is best to "fear" and far away from the skin disease. From a doctor's point of view, psoriasis is a chronic, recurrent, inflammatory disease with genetic predisposition.

        Different people have widely divergent views on psoriasis, and some of them even have obvious errors. This is related to the short time that modern medicine has been introduced into China and the lack of knowledge and education on psoriasis. Starting from the understanding of traditional Chinese medicine, most people confuse psoriasis with infectious diseases such as tinea capitis and tinea pedis. In addition, psoriasis usually has obvious dandruff phenomenon. Therefore, it will bring fear or avoidance to the surrounding people. However, the mentality of fear or resistance from the surrounding people is the most destructive to the psychology of patients with psoriasis, which is usually more severe than the disease itself.

        Many patients with psoriasis have told me that if given a choice between psoriasis and a type of cancer, he would prefer the latter. Many patients refer to psoriasis as chronic cancer of the skin. Under the suggestion of "no treatment for asthma inside, no treatment for ringworm outside" in traditional medicine, they fall into a very pessimistic attitude, thus being enslaved by psoriasis, wasting their life. Therefore, it is very important to popularize correct understanding of psoriasis among patients and the surrounding normal population.

        Although from a genetic perspective, psoriasis is more like a population polymorphism, modern clinical medicine defines psoriasis as a genetically predisposed, chronic, recurrent, inflammatory disease that can involve multiple systems. The so-called genetic predisposition refers to the occurrence of psoriasis under the action of environmental factors (external causes), such as infection, drugs and trauma, on the basis of carrying susceptibility genes (internal causes). After a person carries a susceptibility gene, it is not necessary to develop the disease at birth or shortly after birth, but under the stimulation of appropriate environmental factors, such as severe suppurative tonsillitis, after the susceptibility gene exerts its abnormal function, psoriasis will show up. This process can occur as a child, as an adult or as an old person, and may not be triggered throughout life. It is not difficult to understand why psoriasis with genetic predisposition is passed from generation to generation in some families, while in others only one person has the disease or is passed on from generation to generation. In general, psoriasis is familial and ethnically concentrated, which fully indicates that the disease has a genetic predisposition. Unfortunately, although great progress has been made in the genetics of psoriasis, no gene has been found to fully explain the pathogenesis of psoriasis. As a result, the desire of many patients to avoid being passed on to the next generation through prenatal diagnosis based on genetic testing remains unfulfilled in modern medicine. Meanwhile, the radical cure of psoriasis based on gene therapy is still a long way off.

        After understanding the pathogenesis of psoriasis, it is necessary to understand the pathogenesis of psoriasis. Chronic, recurrent, and inflammatory diseases mean that the onset and progression of the disease is slow and patients tend to have a long course of disease. Skin lesions often accompany patients for months, years, or even decades. The meaning of recurrence indicates that the disease has the characteristics of fluctuation and repetition, and the disease has the characteristics of recurrence, which means that in the treatment of the disease, the prevention of recurrence and aggravation as well as treatment need to pay attention, and even in most cases, the prevention of recurrence and aggravation is more important than the treatment. Inflammatory diseases distinguish psoriasis from other infectious diseases (or infectious diseases) and malignancies. Inflammatory disease occurs when the body's immune system becomes overactivated in a certain state, producing an immune response that targets the body's own tissues. Immune response is the defense system of the human body, which is originally intended to eliminate the invasion of microorganisms or parasites from the outside world. In inflammatory diseases, in the absence of invaders, the immune system overdefends, thus causing damage to some organs and tissues of the human body. In psoriasis, overactive inflammatory cells enter the skin tissue. As a result, the skin can feel red and hot, and some patients can also see pustules on the surface of the skin. Pustules contain a large number of cells that are the most common pioneers of inflammation in the body -- white blood cells.

        After psoriasis is identified as an inflammatory disease, it is not difficult to understand the use of immunosuppressive drugs in modern medicine to treat psoriasis. And many drugs that enhance the immune response, such as interferon, thymosin and other drugs, can significantly aggravate psoriasis, and even lead to erythroderma.

        A correct understanding of the etiology and regularity of psoriasis can help us to reduce unnecessary psychological burden, reduce the eager medical behavior in the process of seeking medical treatment, and make a long-term and reasonable prevention and treatment plan. It can also make us more socially acceptable, help us regain self-confidence, better engaged in work and social activities.