Plaque psoriasis is a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory skin disease. The role of cytokines in the development of psoriasis is well known and has been studied for decades. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is the cellular response to the disturbed homeostasis in the ER. ER stress is involved in different human pathologies, including chronic inflammatory and degenerative conditions. The aim of our study was to explore whether the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in ER stress related

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... s are associated with a higher risk for plaque psoriasis. We studied 29 SNPs in the following ER stress genes: ATF6 (chr1), HSPA5 (chr9), HSP90B1 (chr12), ERN1 (chr17), XBP1 (chr22). Single marker analysis resulted in significant associations with the HSP90B1 gene (rs17034977, p=0.0232) and with the ERN1 gene (rs9916168, p<0.0001). Haplotype analysis revealed that the AGCCCG block in the HSP90B1 gene differed statistically significantly between patients and controls (p=0.0197). Our study suggests that the variations in the ER stress related genes may contribute to the genetic susceptibility to psoriasis and the genes under investigation may be involved in the pathogenesis of this inflammatory disease.