Inhibition of proliferation of psoriatic and healthy fibroblasts in cell culture by selected dead-sea salts

The effect of five selected minerals abundant in the Dead-sea brine was studied on proliferation of fibroblasts grown from psoriatic and healthy skin biopsy specimens in cell culture. The reason for carrying out this study was looking for the mechanism of the antiproliferative effect of selective Dead-sea minerals in improving the psoriatic condition. Psoriatic skin shave biopsy specimens (both from involved and uninvolved areas of the body) as well as healthy skin (obtained from amputated limbs) were incubated in tissue culture, and their outgrowing fibroblasts were used for this study. The number of cells and their cyclic AMP content were used as parameters for cell division and for proving the selective involvement of magnesium salts in the antiproliferative effect. It is shown that the inhibitory effects of magnesium bromide and magnesium chloride on cell growth were significantly stronger than those of their corresponding potassium salts or of sodium chloride. These results were obtained with both psoriatic and healthy skin fibroblasts, indicating that the inhibitory effect of the selected Dead-sea minerals is present in healthy and psoriatic skin cells.