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Autoimmune disease

Skin deep but complex

Nature volume 449, pages 551–553 (2007)Cite this article

The antimicrobial peptide LL37 is essential for normal immune responses to infection or tissue injury. But in the autoimmune skin disorder psoriasis, LL37 propagates disease by forming complexes with host DNA.

The innate (nonspecific) immune system is responsible for detecting pathogens and inducing effector molecules to coordinate subsequent immune responses and combat infection. Genes encoding the receptors of innate immunity are hard-wired in the host genome, and honed to near perfection by the selective pressures of evolution to respond only to non-self targets. When tolerance (non-responsiveness to self) is broken, this can result in autoimmune disease. On page 564 of this issue, Lande et al.1 report a costly glitch in the innate immune response that seems to underlie the development of the common autoimmune skin disease psoriasisFootnote 1.

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Figure 1: Role of LL37 in psoriasis.

Notes

  1. This article and the paper concerned1 were published online on 16 September 2007.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nicole Baumgarth is in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, The Center for Comparative Medicine and Graduate Group in Immunology, University of California, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    Nicole Baumgarth

  2. Charles L. Bevins is in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, and Graduate Group in Immunology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA. clbevins@ucdavis.edu,

    Charles L. Bevins

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  1. Nicole Baumgarth
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Baumgarth, N., Bevins, C. Skin deep but complex. Nature 449, 551–553 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05893

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