Tissue expression of aquaporin 3 in acral and non acral lesions of vitiligo / Vania Lazarova Mladenova ; Supervised Ola M. Abuzeid , Dalia M. Abdelhalim , Magda I. Assaf

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Dermatology and Venerology

To compare the expression of AQP3 in keratinocytes of acral and non acral vitiliginous skin and in normal skin of control subjects, in an attempt to shed some light on the possible role of AQP3 in the pathogenesis of vitiligo and in the resistance to treatment reported in acral lesions.Methods: This comparative controlled study was conducted on 15 patients with both acral and non-acral vitiligo lesions and 15 subjects served as controls. Six (2 mm) punch biopsies were taken from proximal acral, distal acral and non-acral skin; from both, lesional and perilesional vitiliginous areas. Two 2 mm punch biopsies were taken from each volunteer (one from acral area, and one from non-acral area). AQP3 tissue expression was analyzed immunohistochemically.Results: AQP3 Abs stained both the vitiliginous and normal epidermis in both the basal and spinous layers. No staining reaction was detected within the stratum corneum in all cases and controls. AQP3 immunoreactivity wasn{u2019}t observed in granular cell layer in all lesional and perilesional vitiligo skin biopsies, opposite to controls where it was present in all biopsies (p< 0.001).In basal layer, AQP3 expression was significantly lower in lesional non-acral and perilesional (acral and non-acral) biopsies when compared to controls (p= 0.021), (p= 0.017) and (p= 0.011) respectively. In stratum spinosum, a statistically significant less AQP3 expression was observed in perilesional biopsies compared to lesional biopsies (p= 0.050). Marked gradual fading of AQP3 expression was noticed in both, lesional and perilesional acral skin, when comparing it to the exclusively uniform AQP3 staining in controls (p= 0.050)

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