Regulatory networks contributing to psoriasis susceptibility.

The non-involved, healthy-looking skin of psoriatic patients displays inherent characteristics that make it prone to develop typical psoriatic symptoms. Our primary aim was to identify genes and proteins that are differentially regulated in the non-involved psoriatic and the normal epidermis, and to discover regulatory networks responsible for these differences. A cDNA microarray experiment was performed to compare the gene expression profiles of 4 healthy and 4 psoriatic non-involved epidermis samples in response to T-cell lymphokine induction in organotypic cultures. We identified 61 annotated genes and another 11 expressed transcripts that were differentially regulated in the psoriatic tissues. Bioinformatics analysis suggested that the regulation of cell morphology, development and cell death is abnormal, and that the metabolism of small molecules and lipids is differentially regulated in psoriatic epidermis. Our results indicate that one of the early steps of psoriasis pathogenesis may be the abnormal regulation of IL-23A and IL-1B genes in psoriatic keratinocytes.