الفهرس 
ContentsOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory, immune-mediated skin condition characterized by periods of spontaneous remissions and exacerbations. Cathepsin D (CD) is a major intracellular aspartic protease of endosomes and lysosomes. It is involved in the proteolytic activation and degradation of intracellular proteins. In skin, CD plays a role in both extracellular and intracellular catabolism. It may be involved in the control of cell differentiation during normal development and is thought to be associated with the final stage of desquamation. In psoriasis premature activation of CD in the spinous layer would interrupt the orderly process of epidermal differentiation, leading to premature desquamation. The aim of our study is to investigate the role of CD in the pathogenesis of psoriasis through immunohistochemical evaluation of CD expression in psoriatic epidermis (lesional and perilesional) in comparison to normal control and correlate the results with PASI score. A statistically significant difference was found between control and lesional areas of psoriatic patients regarding CD positivity of expression, while a high statistically significant difference was found between them regarding the density of expression. A statistically non-significant difference was found between control and perilesional areas of psoriatic patients regarding positivity or density. A statistically significant difference was found between lesional and perilesional areas of psoriatic patients regarding positivity. A high statistically significant positive correlation was found between PASI score and lesional density in cases, while no statistically significant correlation was found between PASI score and perilesional density.