Live community report · recomputed hourly
What 270 people are telling us so far
Everyone who contributes to psoriasisDB was promised the aggregate results back. This is that report — computed directly from the live database, updated as new people join. Before reading, please take the method notes below seriously: this is self-reported pattern data from a self-selected group, not a clinical study.
How to read this report
- Who is in the data. 270 anonymous volunteers, mostly from online psoriasis communities, contributing since 18 July 2026. A self-selected group — people with milder or long-resolved psoriasis are less likely to be here, so shares should not be read as population prevalence.
- Everything is self-reported and every question is skippable, so each chart states how many people answered it. Nothing here is verified by a clinician.
- Descriptive, not causal. These are counts and shares — patterns worth investigating, never proof that something causes or cures psoriasis. This page will never promise a cure.
- Privacy. Only aggregates are published. Free-text answers are never quoted, and countries are only named once at least three participants live there.
- Data hygiene. 1 numeric values outside plausible ranges (mostly height/weight typed in the wrong unit) and 1 internal test entry are excluded from calculations.
Analysis designed and compiled by Claude (Anthropic’s AI model), working with the project’s founder. Numbers recomputed from the live database — last computed 6 August 2026 at 16:23 UTC.
Who has contributed
United States (121), United Kingdom (26), Canada (19), India (19), Germany (13), Australia (11), Netherlands (6), Singapore (5), Ireland (4), France (3) — plus 43 people in countries with fewer than three participants, which we don’t name to protect anonymity.
When it begins
Age at onset, for all 268 who shared it. The median is 21 — psoriasis is overwhelmingly a disease that starts young. But the long tail is real: 38 people here first saw it at 40 or later.
133 began before 21 · 97 between 21 and 39 · 38 at 40 or later. Medical literature describes onset as bimodal — an early peak in the teens and twenties and a smaller one around 50 — and this data is starting to draw the same shape.
Early-onset and late-onset look like different stories
Splitting the cohort by age at onset, the groups differ in ways that echo the published distinction between early- and late-onset psoriasis: the late group reports far fewer strep-linked onsets, less family history, and much more often a sudden appearance.
Small groups — especially the 38 people with onset at 40+ — so treat every difference as a hypothesis, not a finding. It is exactly the kind of pattern this project exists to surface for real research.
Triggers — in one chart
For 25 everyday factors, each person said whether it worsens their skin, helps it, does nothing, or shows no clear pattern. Bars are the share of everyone who answered (roughly 267 people per row); the missing remainder answered “no effect” or “not sure”.
Stress stands alone. 79% say stress worsens their psoriasis — the strongest consensus in the entire dataset, with 0 people saying it helps.
Sun and sea are the mirror image. Sunlight helps 55% (worsens 4%), sea water helps 45%, while cold weather worsens 51% and helps almost no one. Consistent with phototherapy being a real treatment — and with winter being the hardest season below.
Food is where certainty disappears. On every diet question — sugar, dairy, gluten, nightshades, red meat, coffee — between 59% and 72% answer “not sure / no pattern”. People are far more certain about weather and stress than about anything they eat.
Seasons: 47% report no seasonal pattern at all — but among the 138 who have one, winter dominates (119 of 138).
Where it lives on the body
Where psoriasis first appeared versus where it is now — for most people it spreads well beyond its starting point. The scalp is both the most common starting point (128 people) and the most common site today (184).
where it first appeared where it is nowcounts of 268 people
Beyond the skin
The joint question deserves attention. Of 267 who answered, 43 have diagnosed psoriatic arthritis — but another 86 report joint pain or stiffness without a diagnosis. If even part of that group has undiagnosed PsA, it matters: joint damage is preventable but not reversible. If this is you, mention it to your doctor.
Most people here have no family history. 52% of 269 report no relative with psoriasis that they know of.
Mental health is the most common companion. Among 241 people answering about their own other diagnoses, depression or anxiety tops the list (114 people, 47%) — ahead of every physical condition.
Other diagnosed conditions (241 answered)
Median self-rated severity right now: 4 / 10 (269 answered). Median BMI 26.2 (238 with plausible height and weight; 58% at 25+, in line with the known association between psoriasis and metabolic health).
Treatments — tried, and still using
Everything at least five people have tried, alongside how many still use it. The gap between the bars is its own finding: many treatments get tried and abandoned.
ever tried (269 answered) using now (259 answered)
Analyst’s notes
- Asked for the single most effective thing they have ever tried, the answers cluster into three camps: biologics (named more than any other class, often with “cleared me completely”), topical steroids (effective but repeatedly described as short-lived), and sun plus sea water — several people independently name the beach as their best treatment.
- Asked what made things worse, a recurring theme is steroid rebound — flares after stopping steroid creams or during off-weeks. Alcohol, stress, and infections recur here too.
- In personal origin theories, stress and genetics dominate, usually together — “it was dormant until a terrible year” is the archetypal story. A handful of people independently name statins, isotretinoin (Accutane), or a strep infection as their suspected trigger — classes of report worth structured questions in the next survey version.
- The most requested missing questions: migration and climate history across a lifetime, how the disease progressed over decades, biologic side effects, and infant feeding. They are queued for version 2 of the survey.
What this is — and is not
psoriasisDB is a patient-built, hypothesis-generating dataset. Nothing on this page is medical advice, a treatment recommendation, or a claim of cause or cure. Its purpose is to surface patterns that properly controlled research can test — and to give everyone who contributed their data back.