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An investigation of antistreptococcal antibody responses in guttate psoriasis

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Abstract

In two-thirds of patients with guttate psoriasis (GP), there is good evidence that the eruption is triggered by a streptococcal throat infection. We attempted to determine if a specific epitope of the bacterial pathogen was associated with the humoral immune response in GP patients. Antibody titres against beta-haemolytic streptococci (BHS) extracts in sera from 14 patients with GP, 10 healthy controls and 10 chronic plaque psoriasis (CPP) patients were determined by ELISA. Antibody BHS reactivity was investigated using immunoblotting, followed by epitope mapping using peptide-phage display. The highest GP antibody titres (10,000–25,000) were found in sera that had a matching streptococcal isolate, three sera had high (5,000–12,500) and seven had raised titres (500–5,000). In the healthy control group, three had relatively high and seven lower titres. All the CPP sera had very low titres (<500). In the immunoblots, three major bands were recognised by all the GP sera, and, to a lesser extent, by four healthy controls. No GP-specific protein was identified. Epitope mapping identified 10 phage clones that specifically bound 2 or 3 GP sera, displaying five different peptide sequences that were not streptococcal in origin. These findings suggest that the antigen specificity of the humoral response to BHS in GP does not differ from that of non-psoriatic individuals.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Jonathan M Gershoni (Tel-Aviv University) for providing the peptide phage display library. This study was supported by a grant from the Skin Research Foundation, UK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Room 202, Green Building, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Limor Nahary, Aviva Tamarkin, Nomy Kayam & Itai Benhar

  2. Department of Food Science, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Bet Dagan, Israel

    Shlomo Sela

  3. Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, St Mary’s Campus, London, UK

    Lionel Fry, Barbara Baker & Anne Powles

  4. Department of Dermatology, St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

    Lionel Fry & Sarah Rogers

  5. Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, Room 125, St Mary’s Campus, London, W2 1PG, UK

    Lionel Fry

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  1. Limor Nahary
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  2. Aviva Tamarkin
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  3. Nomy Kayam
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  4. Shlomo Sela
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  5. Lionel Fry
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  6. Barbara Baker
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  8. Sarah Rogers
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  9. Itai Benhar
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Correspondence to Lionel Fry or Itai Benhar.

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Nahary, L., Tamarkin, A., Kayam, N. et al. An investigation of antistreptococcal antibody responses in guttate psoriasis. Arch Dermatol Res 300, 441–449 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00403-008-0866-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00403-008-0866-x

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