THE REPERTOIRE OF T-CELL ANTIGEN RECEPTOR BETA-CHAIN VARIABLE REGIONSASSOCIATED WITH PSORIASIS-VULGARIS

We investigated whether the pattern of T-cell receptors expressed by T cells in inflamed psoriatic skin differed substantially from the patt ern seen in T cells from the peripheral blood. A bias or restriction i n the repertoire of T-cell receptors found in the lesional skin of dif ferent patients might imply that specific subsets of T cells were caus ally associated with initiating or maintaining the lesions, By using a polymerase chain reaction-based assay of T-cell receptor beta-chain v ariable region mRNA, we found that the patterns of beta-chain mRNAs di splayed in 14 samples of lesional skin or six samples of noninvolved s kin were not significantly less diverse than the patterns found in mat ched peripheral blood samples. There was no evidence that the active l esions of multiple patients showed overexpression of T cells expressin g one or a few T-cell receptor forms. The pattern of T-cell receptors displayed in clinically normal skin from normal control individuals sh owed about the same diversity as normal blood. While these results may not exclude either classical antigen or superantigen-based T-cell act ivation mechanisms in active plaques, the absence of a simple pattern of V beta usage in different patients suggests than other aspects of T -cell biology including trafficking, proliferation, co-stimulation, or responses to cytokines must also be considered.