Atopic dermatitis: A combined approach of non-invasive monitoring and repair

Recent studies even report that AD patients have inferior mental health scores compared with those with diabetes. Therefore, accurate assessment and early identification of the disease is very important as it will facilitate the treatment and will certainly also reduce the costs in healthcare of these patients.

In this project we will first develop non-invasive diagnostic methods to identify the disease not only in patients in a mild or severe state, but also at a very early stage of the disease. Early identification of AD offers the opportunity to start with early treatment, which may minimize allergic sensitization of the skin. This might reduce the chance for reoccurrence of the disease. Furthermore, as it has been hypothesized that asthma in individuals with AD results from allergic sensitization of the skin, early treatment might, therefore, also reduce the development of asthma in AD patients.

Finally, it would be a challenge to use these novel diagnostic methods for screening of very young children to identify children with a high risk to develop AD. This would provide the opportunity to monitor these high-risk children at regular intervals, to minimize the formation of eczematous lesions. The end point of this stage of the project is development of non-invasive methods to assess lipid organization, lipid composition and levels of natural moisturizers in the stratum corneum in healthy volunteers and in AD patients.