Cumulative Life Course Impairment: Evidence for Hidradenitis Suppurativa
What Is This Study About? The authors of a recent #openaccess study investigated how #hidradenitissuppurativa (HS) can impact some of the major life areas over time, such as education, mental health, relationships and sexual health, and career trajectory. HS often starts in early adulthood, a time of major life choices and decisions. The authors explored the literature for evidence of cumulative life course Impairment (CLCI), a measure of how an illness affects the life course trajectory of a patient, in people with HS (#pwHS). During 2023–2024, the authors searched several PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library for reports relating to CLCI in pwHS and identified case-controls, cross-sectional, and observational studies to understand how HS affects long-term life opportunities and decisions.
📌 Key Findings:
🧠 Mental Health:
- Patients with HS have high rates of anxiety, depression, other psychiatric disorders, and suicidality.
- Mental health challenges are associated with pain, stigma, and disease duration.
💼 Employment and Education:
- HS is associated with higher rates of unemployment.
- HS leads to more missed workdays, reduced productivity, and lower salaries.
- Many people develop HS during school or early career years, which affects their life path and social mobility.
❤️ Relationships, Sexual Health, and Fertility:
- HS affects self-esteem, sexual relationships, and intimacy, especially due to pain, scarring, and fear of rejection.
- Sexual dysfunction and fertility concerns are more common in people with HS, particularly women.
- People with HS are concerned about pregnancy, medication effects, and passing HS on to their children.
- HS may be linked to infertility, pregnancy complications, and difficulty with breastfeeding.
👩⚕️Quality of Life:
- HS can have an immense impact on quality of life.
- Pain, itch, odour, and HS severity can all complicate daily life for pwHS.
💡 What Can Help to Reduce the Negative Impact of HS on People:
- Early diagnosis and treatment can reduce the long-term effects on life.
- Effective therapies improve symptoms and quality of life.
- Mental health support, resilience training, and social support can help reduce the disease burden.
📣 Conclusion:
HS can affect a person’s entire life path. It’s important for healthcare workers to recognize this and to treat early and aggressively to prevent long-term damage to patients’ lives.
Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.20607 Citation: Doroudian Tehrani M, Gibson RS, Snyder CL, Porter ML, Kimball AB. Cumulative life course impairment: Evidence for hidradenitis suppurativa. J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2025 Mar 11. doi: 10.1111/jdv.20607. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40065664.
