👤 Malin Assarsson

Narrowband-UVB (NB-UVB) is a common and effective psoriasis treatment. It exerts its effect locally and is therefore a better model for exploring dynamics of serum biomarkers reflecting psoriasis skin disease activity compared to other treatments with systemic uptake. To perform an exploratory study to assess potential roles of multiple disease mediators as biomarkers for psoriasis disease activity, and increase understanding of NB-UVB treatment effects in psoriatic skin. Patients with plaque psoriasis were sampled (lesional, non-lesional skin, serum) before and after full NB-UVB treatment. Samples were assessed for 78 different mediators using Luminex assays. Correlation networks were analysed to explore interactions between lesional skin mediators before and after NB-UVB treatment. None of the studied serum mediators were significantly affected by NB-UVB treatment after correction for multiple testing. Thirty mediators revealed a significant difference in lesional skin compared to non-lesional skin before treatment including interleukin 23 (IL-23) and C-C motif chemokine ligand 20 (CCL20), but also novel mediators such as angiopoietin-like 4 (ANGPTL4) and pentraxin 3 (PTX3). The levels of 25 mediators in skin decreased significantly, and network analysis revealed markedly reduced cluster formations and correlations after NB-UVB. NB-UVB treatment reduced the concentration of mediators of the Th17 inflammatory pathway and chemotaxis in psoriatic lesional skin, but also affected less studied and novel mediators. Although the treatment affected the levels of a majority of mediators in skin, no corresponding effect was observed in serum, thus challenging the possibility of a serum biomarker reflecting skin disease activity. Show less

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is recommended as the primary test in cervical cancer screening, with co-testing by cytology for HPV-positive women to identify cervical lesions. Cytology has low sensitivity and there is a need to identify biomarkers that could identify dysplasia that are likely to progress to cancer. We searched for plasma proteins that could identify women with cervical cancer using the multiplex proximity extension assay (PEA). The abundance of 100 proteins were measured in plasma collected at the time of diagnosis of patients with invasive cervical cancer and in population controls using the Olink Multiplex panels CVD II, INF I, and ONC II. Eighty proteins showed increased levels in cases compared with controls. We identified a signature of 11 proteins (PTX3, ITGB1BP2, AXIN1, STAMPB, SRC, SIRT2, 4E-BP1, PAPPA, HB-EGF, NEMO and IL27) that distinguished cases and controls with a sensitivity of 0.96 at a specificity of 1.0. This signature was evaluated in a prospective replication cohort with samples collected before, at or after diagnosis and achieved a sensitivity of 0.78 and a specificity 0.56 separating samples collected at the time of diagnosis of invasive cancer from samples collected prior to diagnosis. No difference in abundance was seen between samples collected prior to diagnosis or after treatment as compared with population controls, indicating that this protein signature is mainly informative close to time of diagnosis. Further studies are needed to determine the optimal window in time prior to diagnosis for these biomarker candidates. Show less