Involucrin expression in keratinization disorders of the skin—a preliminary study

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We have studied the expression of involucrin in a variety of keratinization disorders, mostly of genetic origin using an avidin-biotin-peroxidase technique. In normal human epidermis 25% of the living epidermis was labelled. The diseases studied fell into two groups. Diseases with greatly increased involucrin staining including collodion baby (38%), Darier's disease (49%), Flegel's disease (56%), erythrokeratoderma variabilis (60%), epidermal naevus with epidermolytic hyperkeratosis (45%) and congenital bullous (58%) and non-bullous (44%) ichythyosiform erythroderma; and diseases with normal or slightly increased staining, including ichthyosis vulgaris (27%), X-linked ichthyosis (25%), confluent and reticulate papillomatosis (27%) and simple epidermal naevus (28%). These results demonstrate that involucrin expression is altered in some keratinization disorders and suggest that in such conditions cellular functions other than keratin metabolism are also affected.