Innate Immune Cells Hint at Eczema Cause

An additional type of immune cell in skin has been discovered that plays a role in fighting off parasitic invaders such as ticks, mites, and worms, and could be linked to eczema and allergic skin diseases.

The new cell type is part of a family known as group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) which was recently discovered in the gut and the lung, and now, such cells have been found in the skin, where they are relatively more numerous.

Immunologists at the Centenary Institute (Newtown, NSW, Australia) in collaboration with other scientists, developed techniques for marking different cells of the immune system and tracking them live under the microscope. The investigators used a variety of technique to identify the new immune cell type. This included tissue processing and flow cytometry, generation of bone marrow chimeras, measurement of cytokines in tissues, and quantification of gene expression in sorted ILC2 cells by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).

The sophisticated live imaging techniques allowed the scientists to watch the behavior of the ILC2 cells in the skin, where they moved in a characteristic way, in random spurts punctuated by stoppages. As well as the interaction with mast cells, the team was able to show that ILC2 cells could be stimulated to spread quickly and were capable of generating the inflammatory skin disease.

Wolfgang Weninger, MD, a professor at the Centenary Institute, said, “We found that ILC2 cells were the major population in the skin that produced interleukin 13, a molecule that has been linked to a number of allergic diseases, including eczema. There's a great deal we don't understand about the debilitating skin conditions of allergies and eczema, but they affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide.” The study was published on April 21, 2013, in the journal Nature Immunology.

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