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Epidemiology
Pemphigus vulgaris is a relatively rare disease that only affects about 1 to 5 people in 1 million in the United Kingdom, with an incidence of 1-10 cases per 1 million people across the world. There is an estimated prevalence of 30,000-40,000 cases in the United States. Cases of P. vulgaris usually don't develop until after the age of 50 or so. The disease is not contagious which means it cannot be spread from person to person. There is currently no way of knowing who will be affected with P. vulgaris in their life as it is usually not a genetic disorder and is usually triggered later in life by environmental factors. Men and women are both equally affected and the disease has been found to affect people of many different cultures and racial backgrounds, especially Ashkenazi Jews, people of Mediterranean, North Indian and Persian decent. There has been no found difference in the rate of disease when looking at socioeconomic factors as well. If left untreated, 8 or 10 people with the disease died within a year with a cause of death being infection or loss of fluids, which is very common for raw, open sores that are characteristic of P. vulgaris. With treatment, only about 1 in 10 people with the disease die, either from the condition, or side effects of the medicine.

An affect of the disease being so rare is that there is not enough evidence to prove that the treatments currently being used are actually as effective as they could be. Doctors are trying to find effective steroid-sparing agents to use in the treatment, to decrease the side effects of long term steroid treatment. The small amount of case numbers make it hard to test statistical significance between the affected and the control groups when testing if these types of systematic treatments are effective.