Involved and uninvolved skin from psoriatic subjects: are they equally diseased? Assessment by skin transplanted to congenitally athymic (nude) mice.

A highly significant, but unanswered, question in the pathogenesis of psoriasis relates to how normal appearing and diseased skin can coexist, undergo spontaneous flares and remissions, and yet appear to be genetically acquired. A plausible explanation for these disparate observations is that there is a basic defect in epidermal proliferation of skin of subjects with psoriasis and that disease expression is governed by other host factors. To address this question, we compared epidermal proliferation of skin involved and uninvolved with psoriasis with normal skin before and after transplantation to congenitally athymic (nude) mice, a biologic milieu free of humoral factors unique to the donor host. Results demonstrated that (a) before transplant, synthesis of DNA by the epidermal cells from skin uninvolved and involved with psoriasis is significantly higher than normal, 1.6 and 3.6 times, respectively; (b) 6 wk after transplantation, synthesis of DNA by epidermal cells is unchanged for normal skin, increased for uninvolved skin, and decreased for involved skin. These increases and decreases are of such a magnitude that at 6 wk the number of epidermal cells synthesizing DNA per 1,000 basal cells is identical, and is 2.2 times that of normal skin. When removed from the milieu of the afflicted host, skin involved and uninvolved with psoriasis appear equally "diseased." These data support the notion that there is aberrant epidermal proliferation in skin of patients with psoriasis and that host factors appear to play a role both in the expression and nonexpression of this disease.