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Psoriasis is associated with increased β-defensin genomic copy number

Nature Genetics volume 40, pages 23–25 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Psoriasis is a common inflammatory skin disease with a strong genetic component. We analyzed the genomic copy number polymorphism of the β-defensin region on human chromosome 8 in 179 Dutch individuals with psoriasis and 272 controls and in 319 German individuals with psoriasis and 305 controls. Comparisons in both cohorts showed a significant association between higher genomic copy number for β-defensin genes and risk of psoriasis.

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Figure 1: Frequency distributions of β-defensin genomic copy number.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank J. Tyson for help and advice, and J. Hewitt and J. Brookfield for comments on the manuscript. This work was funded by a Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to E.J.H. (grant 071024) and a grant from the Genomics Program of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research to J.S. (050-10-102).

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Author notes

  1. John A L Armour and Joost Schalkwijk: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

    Edward J Hollox

  2. Institute of Human Genetics, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen, Nuremberg, 91054, Erlangen, Germany

    Ulrike Huffmeier, Jesús Lascorz & André Reis

  3. Department of Dermatology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen Centre for Molecular Life Sciences, Nijmegen, 652 GA, The Netherlands

    Patrick L J M Zeeuwen, Diana Rodijk-Olthuis, Peter C M van de Kerkhof, Gys de Jongh & Joost Schalkwijk

  4. Institute of Genetics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK

    Raquel Palla & John A L Armour

  5. Department of Dermatology, University of Münster, Münster, NG7 2UH, Germany

    Heiko Traupe

  6. Department of Endocrinology and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, 6500 HB, The Netherlands

    Martin den Heijer

Authors
  1. Edward J Hollox
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  11. André Reis
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  12. John A L Armour
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Contributions

E.J.H., A.R., J.S. and J.A.L.A. conceived and coordinated the study. P.C.M.v.d.K., H.T., M.d.H., P.L.J.M.Z., D.R.-O., A.R. and J.S. collected and characterized the clinical samples. Copy number typing was carried out by E.J.H. (MAPH/REDVR), R.P., J.A.L.A., J.L. and U.H. (PRT). E.J.H., J.S., J.A.L.A. and G.d.J. performed the statistical and typing quality analysis, with contributions from P.L.J.M.Z., U.H. and M.d.H. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper, with major input from E.J.H., J.S., A.R. and J.A.L.A.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John A L Armour.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 640 kb)

Supplementary Table 2 (XLS 561 kb)

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Hollox, E., Huffmeier, U., Zeeuwen, P. et al. Psoriasis is associated with increased β-defensin genomic copy number. Nat Genet 40, 23–25 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2007.48

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