Overexpression of cathepsin S induces chronic atopic dermatitis in mice - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 2012 Apr;132(4):1169-76.

doi: 10.1038/jid.2011.404. Epub 2011 Dec 15.

Ki Beom Bae, Myoung Ok Kim, Dong Hoon Yu, Hei Jung Kim, Hyung Soo Yuh, Young Rae Ji, Si Jun Park, Sol Kim, Kyu-Hee Son, Sang-Joon Park, Duhak Yoon, Dong-Seok Lee, Sanggyu Lee, Hyun-Shik Lee, Tae-Yoon Kim, Zae Young Ryoo

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Overexpression of cathepsin S induces chronic atopic dermatitis in mice

Nari Kim et al. J Invest Dermatol. 2012 Apr.

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Abstract

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronically relapsing, non contagious pruritic skin disease with two phases: acute and chronic. Cysteine protease cathepsin S (CTSS) is involved in inflammatory processes, possibly leading to atherosclerosis and asthma. Recently, it has been reported that CTSS can arouse a predominant sensation of itch accompanied by classical ligand–receptor signaling [corrected]. Recently, CTSS was shown to be a ligand for proteinase-activated receptor-2 (PAR-2), which is associated with itching. In this study, we show that CTSS-overexpressing transgenic (TG) mice spontaneously develop a skin disorder similar to chronic AD. The results of this study suggest that CTSS overexpression triggers PAR-2 expression in dendritic cells (DCs), resulting in the promotion of CD4(+) differentiation, which is involved in major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II expression. In addition, we investigated mast cells and macrophages and found significantly higher mean levels of T helper type 1 (Th1) cell-associated cytokines than T helper type 2 (Th2) cell-associated cytokines in CTSS-overexpressing TG mice. These results suggest that increased PAR-2 expression in DCs as a result of CTSS overexpression induces scratching behavior and Th1 cell-associated cytokine expression, and can trigger chronic AD symptoms.

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