Transcriptional profile of human epidermal keratinocytes in response to formaldehyde

Formaldehyde exposure could produce a variety of dermatologic problems in humans. In human skin, formaldehyde cause irritant and allergic contact dermatitis. In this study, the genome scale transcriptional response profile of normal human keratinocytes to formaldehyde was investigated. The genome-wide transcriptional profiling analysis was performed in cultured human primary keratinocytes treated with the sub-cytotoxic concentration of formaldehyde in order to investigate the toxicological effect of low level exposure to formaldehyde. Normal human keratinocytes (NHKs) were stimulated with 200 μM of formaldehyde for 24 hours and harvested for total RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.