Source: Thailand Medical News Nov 28, 2019 4 years, 4 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 17 hours, 47 minutes ago
A new research study by the Medical University of Vienna indicates that
Psoriasis is caused by genetic changes in the skin stem cells.
Psoriasis is not a congenital disorder it only occurs later on in life and has various causes, such as stress or UV irradiation, some of which have not yet been explored. In biomedical science, this frequently occurring inflammatory skin disease is usually associated with a disorder in the immune system, in which the body's immune response is directed against healthy skin cells. Now, a research team from the Department of Dermatology and the Clinical Institute for Laboratory Medicine has shown that a genetic change in the hair follicles of the skin stem cells can trigger psoriasis.
Study leader Dr Erwin Wagner, who recently brought his international group from the Spanish Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) to Med Uni Vienna told
Thailand Medical News, "In the animal models, we were able to show that the signal for the disease can be directed from the outside to the inside, and not just vice versa."
The pivotal result of the study, which has now appeared in the top journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, is that genetic changes in the hair follicles of epidermal stem cells can lead to deregulated expression of transcription factors, such as the Activator Protein-1 (AP-1) proteins, which can cause inflammatory reactions and thus trigger
psoriasis via the immune system. Says Wagner: "If you switch off the target genes of the transcription factors, the inflammation is slowed down significantly."
Dr Latifa Bakiri from the study group at the Clinical Institute for Laboratory Medicine further adds, "This basic research finding is an important step towards a better understanding of this heterogeneous disease."
The medical genetic researchers were also able to show that the immune mediator TSLP (Thymic Stromal Lymphopoietin), which is high in
psoriasis, plays a significant role in this process. "If you inhibit TSLP, the disease is almost stopped. This makes TSLP a potential target for therapeutic use in humans as well in the future", says Wagner,but this requires further research.
The critical importance of AP-1 proteins in skin inflammation is also underscored by a second study from this international group of scientists. In the recently published paper in Cell Reports, it was shown that AP-1 proteins are also important in Atopic Dermatitis (AD), another common inflammatory skin disease (often called
eczema), where these proteins control the colonization of bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus in the skin, a frequent health problem for AD patients.
Reference: Cutaneous Immune Cell-Microbiota Interactions Are Controlled by Epidermal JunB / AP-1. Uluckan, M. Jimenez, B. Roediger, J. Schnabl, L. Diez-Corodova, K. Troulé, W. Weninger, E. Wagner. Cell Rep. 2019 Oct 22; 29 (4): 844-859.e3. doi: 10.1016 / j.celrep.2019.09.042.
