PhD Scientific Days 2021

CL_V_L: Clinical Medicine V. Lectures

Investigation of Inflammatory Biomarkers in Psoriasis

Text of the abstract

Introduction: Psoriasis is a multifactorial, chronic, inflammatory skin disease. In addition to skin inflammation, there are signs of systemic inflammation. The healthy looking skin already carries alterations that could be a basis of the manifestation of the disease.
Aims: To investigate whether signs of systemic inflammation can be detected in the peripheral blood of psoriatic patients that can serve as biomarkers and could be responsible for the detected changes in the uninvolved skin as well as in other organ inflammation.
Method: Blood and skin samples were collected from psoriatic patients and from healthy volunteers. Serum periostin, fibronectin, survivin, VEGF and uPar levels were measured by sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, periostin expression was examined by immunofluorescence staining. Data were normalized to control and were presented as mean ± standard error of mean and analyzed by two-sample t-test. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: We did not detect any significant difference in the serum levels of VEGF and uPar of psoriatic patients compared to healthy controls. We observed that periostin was significantly increased in the serum of psoriatic patients, regardless whether they were treated or not. We detected significantly increased serum fibronectin levels only in those patients who were treated with various systemic therapies for their disease. Gender did not make a difference among patients in the measured elevated periostin and fibronectin levels. Comparison of serum periostin and fibronectin levels among untreated patients with severe versus mild disease did not show any significant difference between the two groups. Finally, we did not detect any difference in the expression of periostin among uninvolved and healthy skin.
Conclusion: Our data indicate that periostin and fibronectin are disease related markers in psoriasis, however they are independent of disease severity and activity.
Funding: OTKA K135084 from NKFIH, Gedeon Richter’s Talentum Foundation.

University and Doctoral School

University of Szeged Faculty of Medicine, Doctoral School of Clinical Medicine