§ Mr. Skeetasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what proportion of the total spent by the Medical Research Council on research is spent on discovering a cure for psoriasis; what is the number of people effectively cured; and what attention is being paid to claims made in other countries for the successful treatment of the disease.
§ Mrs. ThatcherI have been asked to reply.
The Medical Research Council is supporting studies on psoriasis both directly in one of its own research establishments and through the award of project grants in university departments and other centres; it is not possible to isolate the expenditure devoted to these studies. Psoriasis is an inborn disease with an hereditary element and, as there is at present no known means of eradicating the inborn defect, all current treatments are in effect palliative and do not result in a cure.
As in other fields the results of research into this problem are published in the international scientific literature and new developments are thus brought to the attention of clinicians concerned with the treatment of patients. Workers in this field also regularly foregather at conferences and meetings to exchange views and information.