1. ^*Departments of Dermatology, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
2. ^†Departments of Clinical Chemistry, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
3. ^‡Departments of Unit of Cancer Proteomics, Department of Oncology and Pathology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
4. ^§Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
5. ^¶Department of Molecular Sciences, AstraZeneca, Södertälje, Sweden
6. ^#Waters Ltd, Manchester, UK

Correspondence: Mona Ståhle, Department of Dermatology, Karolinska University Hospital, SE-171 76 Stockholm, Sweden. Email: Mona.Stahle@medks.ki.se

Received 15 March 2004; Revised 27 July 2004; Accepted 24 July 2004; Published online 21 December 2004.

Abstract

Psoriasis is a disease with considerable heterogeneity in clinical presentation. This is the first study using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis to compare global protein expression patterns in lesional and non-lesional skin from subjects with acute guttate psoriasis associated with streptococcal throat infection and chronic plaque psoriasis. Samples from experimentally induced contact eczema and normal skin from healthy controls were also included. Proteins with statistically significant differences in expression were used in hierarchical cluster analyses resulting in separation of the different samples into groups. Chronic plaque and guttate psoriasis samples were distinctly separated, indicating that they represent discrete phenotypes at the protein expression level. Interestingly, there was a trend in which guttate psoriasis lesions clustered closer to eczema than to chronic plaque psoriasis lesions, indicating that the duration of the inflammatory reaction may affect clustering. Several of the differentially expressed proteins were identified by mass spectrometry.