Figure 5.

Antimicrobial peptide mRNA expressions and feature correlation analysis. (A) Transcription levels of hBD-1 and Rnase 7 were significantly increased in AK. A marked increase of hBD-2, hBD-3, and to a lesser extent also of psoriasin mRNA was found in SCC and AK compared to BCC and normal skin (* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.005, Kruskal–Wallis; HS, n = 5; NS, n = 10; AK, n = 21; SCC, n = 22; BCC, n = 11; data are mean ± SEM). (B) Pearson correlation matrix of assessed features in AK, SCC, and BCC. Strong correlations are indicated by large circles, whereas weak correlations are indicated by small circles. The color of the scale bar represents the nature of correlation with 1 indicating a strong positive correlation (dark red) and -1 representing a strong negative correlation (dark blue). t-tests to the individual correlations were applied for significance testing and significant correlations were indicated with * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.005; shown as stars in the respective circles). The significant correlation of S. aureus loads with hBD-2 mRNA expression in SCC is highlighted (box); # denotes that no S. aureus signals were detected in BCC with qPCR.