标题：IL-18 contributes to the spontaneous development of atopic dermatitis-like inflammatory skin lesion independently of IgE/stat6 under specific pathogen-free conditions
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2002
卷号：99
期号：17
页码：11340-11345
DOI：10.1073/pnas.152337799
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a pruritic inflammatory skin disease. Because IL-18 directly stimulates T cells and mast cells to release AD-associated molecules, Th2 cytokines, and histamine, we investigated the capacity of IL-18 to induce AD-like inflammatory skin disease by analyzing KIL-18Tg and KCASP1Tg, which skin-specifically overexpress IL-18 and caspase-1, respectively. They spontaneously developed relapsing dermatitis with mastocytosis and Th2 cytokine accumulation accompanied by systemic elevation of IgE and histamine. Stat6-deficient KCASP1Tg displayed undetectable levels of IgE but manifested the same degree of cutaneous changes, whereas IL-18-deficient KCASP1Tg evaded the dermatitis, suggesting that IL-18 causes the skin changes in the absence of IgE/stat6. KIL-18Tg and IL-1-deficient KCASP1Tg took longer to display the lesion than KCASP1Tg. Thus, AD-like inflammation is initiated by overrelease of IL-18 and accelerated by IL-1. Our present study might provide insight into understanding the pathogenesis of and establishing therapeutics for chronic inflammatory skin diseases including AD.
