Acantholytic change of psoriatic-involved epidermis during organ culture in vitro.

Abstract

Summary Incubation of unfixed skin slices in RPMI 1640 medium for 24—48 h resulted in two types of histological change in psoriatic-involved epidermis. The degenerative change was the major finding in 7 out of 11 psoriatic-involved epidermis, whereas the acantholytic change was observed in the remaining four cases. Neither degenerative nor acantholytic changes were observed in psoriatic-uninvolved epidermis (11 cases) or in normal human epidermis (5 cases). The acantholytic change was observed after only a 12-h incubation and was significantly (but not completely) inhibited by the addition of soybean trypsin inhibitor, which had no effect on the degenerative change of keratinocytes. The addition of hydrocortisone in the incubation medium had no effect on cither degenerative or acantholytic changes of keratinocytes. Our results indicate that a significant population of psoriatic-involved epidermis reveals acantholysis during organ culture in vitro, which might be, at least in part, induced by serine-type protease, the activity of which is known to be increased in the psoriatic-involved epidermis.