Dynamic expression of tumor necrosis factor-alpha and vascular endothelial growth factor in rat model of pulmonary emphysema induced by smoke exposure. J Huazhong Univ Sci Technolog Med Sci

Psoriasis vulgaris is considered a chronic inflammatory disease, but its immunopathogenesis has not been well understood. The tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 3 (TNFAIP3) gene functions in negative-feedback regulation of inflammation, and its single nucleotide polymorphism is associated with psoriasis. However, the relationship between the expression level of the TNFAIP3 gene in immune cells and psoriasis is not known so far. In the present study, TNFAIP3mRNA expression levels in pe-ripheral bloodmononuclear cells from 44 patients with psoriasis vulgaris and 30 healthy controls were determined using real-time reverse transcription-PCR analysis. We found that expression of TNFAIP3mRNA in all patients negatively correlated with the psoriatic area and severity index (PASI) (r0.5126; P 0.0004) as well as with the percentage of body surface area affected by psoriasis (r0.5013; P 0.0005). Patients were divided into mild and severe groups based on the mean PASI score. Expres-sion of TNFAIP3mRNA in the mild group was higher than that in the severe group (P 0.0064). Moreover, compared with that in healthy controls, the expression of TNFAIP3mRNA in the mild group was significantly upregulated (P 0.0004), but the ex-pression of TNFAIP3mRNA in the severe group was not. These results suggest that the expression level of TNFAIP3 plays an important role in the pathology of psoriasis vulgaris and that the loss of upregulation of TNFAIP3 expressionmay contribute to the severity of psoriasis vulgaris. Psoriasis vulgaris is a systemic, immune-mediated disordercharacterized by inflammatory skin manifestations and sus-tained activation of multiple immune cells, especially T cells (9