Clinical Predictors for Distinguishing Transient Pediatric Atopic Dermatitis from Early-onset Atopic March Cases

Dr. Robert Sidbury (00:14):

My name is Dr. Robert Sidbury, and I am a pediatric dermatologist at Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

(00:22):

Are there any clinical indicators that distinguish transient ad from likely persistent chronic AD? Yes and no. One of the challenges with this disease is there aren't any reliable biomarkers. There's evolving data, and hopefully there will be soon, but at this point, nothing that we can hang our hat on to say, okay, let's do this blood test and see that there's abnormal filaggrin or abnormal TARC or any one of a number of cytokines or chemokines to suggest that one patient is at greater risk than another to progress to more severe chronic disease. That just doesn't exist.

(01:01):

We do have clinical signs, which are not surprisingly, patients who present very early on with more severe disease are kids I worry more about. Oftentimes in that context are patients with really strong family histories of parents with asthma, allergies, hay fever, the atopic things that go along with eczema. And the presence of those also at least make me worry a bit more about the potential for those kids to progress.