Department of Dermatology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Department of Dermatology, Guang'anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.
Exp Dermatol. 2013 Oct;22(10):679-81. doi: 10.1111/exd.12233.
Psoriasis is an inflammatory, immune-mediated disease of the skin. Several studies have suggested that natural killer (NK) cells and their receptors may be important for its pathogenesis. Here, we examined whether deletion of the activating natural killer receptor gene NKG2C, which has a frequency of 20% in the European population, was associated with psoriasis susceptibility. The NKG2C deletion and a functional polymorphism in its ligand HLA-E were genotyped in a Caucasian cohort of 611 psoriasis cases and 493 controls. We found that the NKG2C deletion was significantly increased in cases compared with controls [0.258 vs 0.200, P = 0.0012, OR = 1.43 (1.15-1.79)]. The low-expressing HLA-E*01:01 allele was associated with psoriasis (P = 0.0018), although this association was dependent on HLA-C. Our findings support a potential immunoregulatory role for NK cells in psoriasis and suggest the importance of future studies to investigate the contribution of NK cells and their regulatory receptors to the pathogenesis of psoriasis.
银屑病是一种皮肤炎症性、免疫介导的疾病。多项研究表明，自然杀伤（NK）细胞及其受体可能对其发病机制具有重要作用。在这里，我们研究了在欧洲人群中频率为 20%的激活型自然杀伤细胞受体基因 NKG2C 的缺失是否与银屑病易感性有关。我们在一个由 611 例银屑病病例和 493 例对照组成的白种人队列中对 NKG2C 缺失和其配体 HLA-E 的功能多态性进行了基因分型。我们发现，与对照组相比，病例组中 NKG2C 缺失明显增加[0.258 比 0.200，P = 0.0012，OR = 1.43（1.15-1.79）]。低表达的 HLA-E*01:01 等位基因与银屑病有关（P = 0.0018），尽管这种关联依赖于 HLA-C。我们的研究结果支持 NK 细胞在银屑病中的潜在免疫调节作用，并表明未来研究调查 NK 细胞及其调节受体对银屑病发病机制的贡献的重要性。
