Eczema discovery at Trinity

SCIENTISTS AT Trinity College Dublin claim to have made a breakthrough in the treatment of eczema and believe it could help to develop new therapies to treat the skin condition.

The work is a collaboration between Trinity College Dublin scientists and researchers in Scotland and Japan. They found that mutations in the filaggrin gene in mice leads to allergic inflammation, comparable to that seen in human eczema and related allergic diseases.

Prof Padraic Fallon, who led the TCD team, said the new model could advance understanding of the early innate causes of eczema, “including the exploration of the reasons why people with eczema progress to develop asthma”.

Filaggrin helps produce the impermeable skin barrier layers in the skin’s outer surface and helps to keep them hydrated.

Without an intact skin barrier, allergens can enter the body and produce a range of allergic responses such as eczema, asthma and hay fever.

Prof Irwin McLean of the University of Dundee said treatments aimed at the filaggrin gene were some years away “but this work is a major step in the right direction”.The findings were published in the journal Nature Genetics.