Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to DermConsult on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Lawrence Eichenfield, a Distinguished Professor of Dermatology and Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine as well as Chief of Pediatric and Adolescent Dermatology at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego. He’ll be discussing the American Academy of Dermatology’s guidance on allergic comorbidities in atopic dermatitis. Let’s hear from him now.
Dr. Eichenfield:
The guidelines end up saying that there's allergic comorbidities that are associated with atopic dermatitis. So we know that food allergy is associated with atopic dermatitis, and that's discussed in the guidelines, but it's actually uncommon that specific foods are the cause of atopic dermatitis. And in fact, there's very good evidence that empiric elimination of foods doesn't work as a management strategy for eczema.
We also know that foods can be associated and can sometimes have an impact with eosinophilic esophagitis, another atopic comorbidity that's seen in atopic dermatitis. And certainly, the rate of food allergy is much higher in patients with more severe atopic dermatitis than with those without atopic dermatitis.
From an intervention standpoint, though, we went through a time period historically where people tried to avoid the introduction of allergenic foods as a way to prevent atopic dermatitis or to prevent food allergy. And it's pretty clear that there's no benefit right now to avoidance of allergenic foods to prevent food allergy. That doesn't work. But also the guidelines discuss that there's no evidence that early food introduction prevents atopic dermatitis.
Unfortunately, the data's not clear enough to make a recommendation on probiotic supplementation to prevent atopic dermatitis. Vitamin D supplementation doesn't appear to prevent atopic dermatitis. Prebiotics—there's not enough evidence to show that they help to prevent atopic dermatitis. We get this list of things that people have brought up as things that might prevent atopic dermatitis but really don't have an evidence basis to recommend it.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Lawrence Eichenfield discussing guidance from the American Academy of Dermatology on allergic comorbidities in atopic dermatitis. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit DermConsult on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
