Factors of Lesions Caused by Psoriasis Found

We at Eastside Dermatology know how troubling having psoriasis can be for an individual. We offer treatments for all different severities of the disease.

Psoriasis is an uncomfortable and embarrassing skin disorder that causes skin cells to grow too fast, which results in thick, white, silvery, or red patches on the skin. Psoriasis affects roughly 3 percent of the world’s population. However, researches have recently found the underlying genetic factors that aid in the repair of skin lesions cause by psoriasis.

Dr. Bogi Anderson, who is a professor of biological chemistry and endocrinology at UCI, along with his colleagues, found out that a gene called grainyhead is responsible for triggering a repair pathway for psoriasis lesions. Grainyhead is known to be a major part in the epidermal development and healing of wounds. They also found that getting rid of this gene amplified the brutality and time of the embarrassing patches. But what does this mean?

These researchers learned that within psoriasis, there is a compound called grainyhead-like-3, which attaches to your DNA to help control the rate of transcription of genetic information from your DNA to the messenger RNA. Essentially, it arranges the initiation of an epidermal repair pathway. The gene was originally found in fruit flies, where it assisted in wound healing.

Researchers have also found out that it is easier to stimulate psoriasis like symptoms in mice that lack the GRHL3 gene. This means that the lesions did not disappear properly and remained visible even during an active immune suppression treatment, which is currently being studied for the disease.

This study shows us that an evolutionary epidermal repair pathway is created in psoriasis lesions and that this pathway helps tame the disease’s severity. It also helps clear up the lesions. Through this study, it is speculated that irregularities in this pathway may contribute psoriasis’s severity and that in the future this could help to treat the disease.