Food allergy, dermatologic diseases, and anaphylaxisIL-31: A new link between T cells and pruritus in atopic skin inflammation
Section snippets
Patients
Six-millimeter punch biopsies were taken, after obtaining informed consent, from nonlesional (n = 10) or lesional (n = 25) skin of patients with atopic dermatitis, lesional skin of patients with psoriasis (n = 24) or prurigo nodularis (n = 5), and healthy skin (n = 12). Patients with atopic dermatitis were identified according to the criteria defined by Hanifin and Rajka.10 Patients with chronic plaque psoriasis in typical locations were enrolled into the study. Diagnosis of prurigo nodularis
IL-31 is upregulated in atopic dermatitis but not in psoriasis
To analyze the expression of IL-31 in pruritic and nonpruritic chronic inflammatory skin diseases, quantitative real-time PCR analysis was performed of IL-31 mRNA expression in healthy skin (n = 12) and nonlesional (n = 10) and lesional (n = 25) skin of atopic dermatitis as well as lesional skin of patients with psoriasis (n = 24) or prurigo nodularis (n = 5). Our results showed that human IL-31 is significantly (P < .001) upregulated in the pruritic atopic dermatitis but not in the nonpruritic
Discussion
Accumulating evidence indicates that chronic inflammatory skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis are T-cell–mediated diseases.1, 23 Although skin-infiltrating effector memory T cells represent histopathological hallmarks of both atopic dermatitis and psoriasis, their clinical phenotype is distinctly different. Besides other symptoms, atopic skin inflammation is accompanied by severe pruritus,5 whereas psoriatic lesions rarely itch.24
Because the transgenic overexpression of murine
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Supported by the European Commission contract QLK4-CT-2001-00366 Chemokine-Atopy (Dr Lauerma, Dr Homey, Dr Alenius, Dr Dieu-Nosjean, Dr Kemeny), the German Research Foundation (SFB503; Dr Homey), the Research Foundation of the Heinrich Heine University (Dr Muller, Dr Hoffmann), the Finnish Foundation of Medicine (Dr Lauerma), and Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research (IZKF Münster STE/103/II/04), Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB 293 A14), Centre de recherches et epidermiques et sensorielles (CERIES Paris), Serono Pharm, Germany (Dr Steinhoff).
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These authors contributed equally to the article