Psoriasis is a chronic auto – immune disease that is believed to be inherited and most common in women. There are seven types of Psoriasis (Plaque Psoriasis, Guttate Psoriasis, Inverse Psoriasis, Pustular Psoriasis, Erythrodemic Psoriasis, Nail Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis), but the most common is Plaque Psoriasis and it affects 4 million people in the United States. It is characterized by raised, inflamed, patchy, red skin covered with white scales that is cause by an excess of inflammation and keratinocyte proliferation. There are several drugs in the market to treat the disease like Stelara and Etanercept (table 1) but recent studies have focused on the role of Interleukin – 17A (IL – 17A) to control it due to its high concentration …show more content…
This mechanism of defense is controlled by the immune system, and its principal and general function is to combat foreign microorganism such as virus and bacteria that may be harmful to our health. The Immune system is divided into two major categories: a) innate immune system and b) adaptive immune system (figure 1). The innate immune system responds to a pathogen in a generic way, it does not offer long-lasting or protective immunity to the host like the adaptive immune system []. The adaptive immune system is primarily composed of lymphocytes B and T, Natural Killer Cells and complementary cells and organs that fight with unwanted compounds thru our body []. The B cells produced the Major Histocompatibility Complex, the T cells and Killer T cells []. The T cells ramify into helper T cells that secrets interleukins. The interleukins (IL) are cytokines, small proteins that are important for cell signaling, and are involved in the inflammation and immunity of the body []. This system is very structured and efficient, but when it fails the patient will start developing what is call an autoimmune disease. An autoimmune disease refers to when components of the immune system attacks our own body as if they were foreign compounds. There are a variety of diseases associated with this malfunction of the body such as lupus, arthritis, vitiligo and psoriasis, just to mention a few. To …show more content…
The first person to characterized and named the disease, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation [], was the physician Galen. He identified this disease as a skin disease through clinical observation in the 150 A.D. []. Then in the 19th century Jean – Louis Ailbert classified the skin disease according to the cause, appearance, duration, course and response to treatment []. It was not until the 1960s that a proper investigation of psoriasis as an autoimmune condition began. The search to identify the genes that determine the disease was brought up in the 1990s thru the Human Genome Project []. Upon the discovery and classification of the disease many therapies have been develop to treat