The study, which was carried out in Japan and published in the journal Nature Genetics, demonstrates that genetics play a significant part in triggering the condition, which is even more prevalent in children and fuels a multi-million dollar category for topical over-the-counter skin care treatments.
Atopic dermatitis, which is also referred to as eczema, is known as a relapsing inflammatory skin condition, which causes an irritating and sometimes painful rash that becomes inflamed, leading to dry and flaky skin.
Currently there are a plethora of topical over-the-counter treatments that employ various types of moisturizing ingredients, invariably emollients and thick ointments, and often combined with steroids, to soothe the skin, prevent inflammation and remoisturize areas of dryness.
Still no treatment to eliminate the condition... yet
Whereas most treatments help to alleviate the condition and its symptoms, no treatment has come anywhere near eliminating it.
However, the researchers at the Riken Center for Genomic Medicine, at Yokohama City, decided to tackle the condition by researching the genetic factors involved as a means of throwing more light on targeted treatments and possibly getting one step closer to a cure.
The research group set about doing this by using a genome-wide association study (GWAS), which aims at identifying gene loci associated with a particular trait, a research avenue that is well suited to the condition because it has a strong genetic and hereditary basis.
Previous studies have identified seven triggers, or loci, for this type of dermatitis following research that was carried out on both European and Chinese populations. However this was the first study that has been conducted on a Japanese population.
The secret seems to be buried in Japanese genes
The researchers carried out a GWAS on 1,472 subjects with atopic dermatitis and 7,971 controls from among the Japanese population, and then validated the results in a separate study on 1,856 subjects with the condition and 7,021 controls.
The researchers analyzed approximately 600,000 genetic variants, from which they identified eight new genetic regions with the condition, together with the seven loci observed in the studies on Chinese and European populations.
The scientists, headed up by Tomomitsu Hirota, say the study findings indicate that atopic dermatitis and asthma are overlapping susceptibility regions, thus sharing common genetic factors with many allergic diseases.
Ultimately the scientists believe that the loci reveal a variety of additional factors, possibly involved in the condition, which in turn suggests paths for future research that may eventually point the way to more effective treatments.