Rajani Katta, MD: Connection Between Obesity, Dietary Health, and Dermatology

In a segment of her HCPLive interview, Rajani Katta, MD, highlighted ways dermatologists can help promote patients’ skin health through diet or exercise promotion. The subject was presented at the SDPA 20th Annual Fall Dermatology Conference.

Katta works as a dermatologist and as a volunteer clinical faculty member at both the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Houston and Baylor College of Medicine. She holds certification in Culinary Medicine from Tulane University and has authored 9 books.

“One of the points that I really start my talk with is the fact that obesity is linked to multiple dermatology conditions,” she explained. “And we in the Dermatology Clinic may be diagnosing obesity because…many of us are checking height and weight and we are recording a BMI in the medical chart. So if you see an elevated BMI indicating that somebody is dealing with either (being) overweight or obesity, is that something that you should bring up to the patient? Is there anything that you, in the few minutes that you have in-clinic, can start to address with the patient?”

Katta also went on to describe randomized, control trials of lifestyle interventions into patients struggling with being overweight or obese and dealing with dermatologic conditions.

“And those lifestyle interventions have either been diet or exercise or diet and exercise that have led to weight loss,” she said. “And in 1 meta analysis, where they looked at 5 of those studies, what they did find was that in patients who had been able to successfully lose weight, they did have an improvement in their PASI score, their psoriasis area and Severity Index score, as well as their quality of life index.”

The SDPA presentation was entitled ‘Weight a Minute: Obesity in Dermatology,’ and covered topics like the cutaneous effects of obesity, the relationship between chronic inflammatory skin diseases and systemic comorbidities, and the diabetes detection strategies being added into clinic workflow.

Watch the interview above to learn more, and find out more from HCPLive’s SDPA 2022 Conference coverage.