Acts of estrangement: reading the psoriatic-skin

I am continually surprised by the acts of estrangement in which my body engages. All bodies do this to some extent – lungs breathe, hearts beat and so on, but with psoriasis, which my article is concerned with, these processes are highly visible. As a condition of the skin, it is a pathology which is enacted both within and without, visible to the social world as well emerging from some little understood inflammatory source within the body. This article will undertake a phenomenological exploration of my own skin and how my experience of my body is affected by its lack of compliance with medicine, cosmetics etc. By some unknown causation it flakes, breaks, itches constantly drawing attention to bodily limits and the limits of medical knowledge. I want to think through the meanings we ascribe to such inflammatory conditions in Western society, how my skin materialises at the nexus of industrialisation, medicine, class and capital. This investigation will emerge at the limit point, the thin skin between the subjective and objective, observing and theorising my skin in ways which dissolve disciplinary boundaries, to comprehend the cultural, biological and environmental forces that work upon my body, estranging it from me.

Elevated levels of corticotrophin-releasing factor binding protein in the blood of patients suffering from arthritis and septicaemia and the presence of novel ligands in synovial fluid.

In view of the reported inflammatory effects of corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) and the associated regulatory elements in the gene of its binding protein (BP), we postulate that both BP as well as novel BP-ligands other than CRF may be involved in inflammatory disease. We have investigated BP in the blood of patients with arthritis and septicaemia and have attempted to identify CRF and other BP-ligands in synovial fluid. The BP was found to be significantly elevated in the blood of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and septicaemia. There was less BP-ligand and CRF in synovial fluid from patients with rheumatoid arthritis that from those with osteo- or psoriatic arthritis. There was at least 10-fold more BP-ligand than CRF in the fluid of all three groups of patients. A small amount of immunoreactive human (h)CRF, eluting in the expected position of CRF-41, was detected after high-pressure liquid chromatography of arthritic synovial fluid; however, the bulk of material with BP-ligand binding activity eluted earlier, suggesting that synovial fluid contained novel peptides that interacted with the BP. These results would suggest that the BP and its ligands could play an endocrine immunomodulatory role in inflammatory disease.