Psoriasis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Psoriasis, including details on treatment, prevention, medication, causes.

Getting under the skin: the immunogenetics of psoriasis.

Bowcock AM, Krueger JG

Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Missouri 63110, USA. Bowcock@genetics.wustl.edu

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the skin that is mediated by T cells, dendritic cells and inflammatory cytokines. We now understand many of the cellular alterations that underlie this disease, and genomic approaches have recently been used to assess the alterations of gene expression in psoriatic skin lesions. Genetic susceptibility factors that contribute to predisposition to psoriasis are now also being identified. It is hoped that we will soon be able to correlate the cellular pathogenesis that occurs in psoriasis with these genetic factors. In this Review article, we describe what is known about genes that confer increased susceptibility to psoriasis, and we integrate this with what is known about the molecular and cellular mechanisms that occur in other inflammatory and autoimmune disorders.

Published 2 September 2005 in Nat Rev Immunol, 5(9): 699-711.
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