Vitamin D may ameliorate the symptoms of the inflammatory skin disease psoriasis by enhancing the production of a molecule that blocks the assembly of inflammatory complexes in the skin.
Jürgen Schauber and Robert Besch at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and their co-workers found that, under certain conditions, DNA in the cytosol of cultured skin cells activates immune complexes called inflammasomes that contain the protein AIM2. Elevated levels of this DNA and AIM2 expression were also found in skin cells from people with psoriasis. When normal skin cells were treated with the antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin LL-37, whose production in the skin is controlled by vitamin D, the peptide bound to cytosolic DNA, inhibiting the formation of AIM2-containing inflammasomes.
Stimulating cathelicidin production may be a promising approach for treating psoriasis, the authors suggest.
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Taming psoriasis with vitamin D. Nature 473, 257 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/473257d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/473257d
