Psoriasis may cause a substantial economic burden to patients, health service providers,

third parties, and the society as a whole. However, all of these costs may not be adequately

considered when assessing the treatment costs for psoriasis. Psoriasis may negatively

affect work productivity as psoriasis has a relatively high incidence in working age

people that lead to possible costs because of lost productivity.

The aims of this thesis were to estimate the economic burden of psoriasis particularly

from patients’ and health service providers’ perspectives and to estimate the background

factors (e.g., severity of psoriasis) that may have led to high costs. Another aim was to

estimate the total medication costs and to estimate psoriasis’ proportion of health-related

productivity losses.

The patient sample was based on patients with psoriasis who visited the Department of

Dermatology in Turku University Hospital during a one-year study period. These patients

were sent a questionnaire. From the patients who gave consent, medication information,

clinical information, and number of visits to Turku University Hospital were collected.

This data was linked to the information from the questionnaire.

Overall psoriasis was estimated to cause a substantial economic burden for the patient,

health service provider, health insurance system, employer, and the society as a whole.

The direct costs represented only a small proportion of the overall financial burden of

psoriasis, whereas indirect costs were significant. The estimated annual costs for patients

and employers were almost twice the costs to health service providers or the Social

Insurance Institution of Finland.

In conclusion, the cost contribution of patients and employers should be considered

when assessing the costs of different treatments, in addition to commonly studied direct

costs of medications and costs to health service providers. Methods used to assess these

costs should be well justified and be described clearly to allow comparisons between

studies and to evaluate the quality of the results.