A 44-year-old woman has developed skin lesions over her elbows and knees during the past year. The lesions start as 4 mm pustules with surrounding erythema but then evolve into 1 to 5 cm plaques that are covered with a silvery-white scale. The lesions appear first in areas of local trauma, but exposure to sunlight causes the lesions to regress. A biopsy of one lesion shows thinning of stratum granulosum with marked overlying parakeratotic scale containing microabscesses. Which of the following risk factors is most likely to be associated with her skin disease?
□ (A) Atopy
□ (B) Autoantibodies to desmoglein
□ (C) Exposure to plant allergens
□ (D) Germline HLA-C allele
□ (E) Herpes simplex virus infection
