EPIDEMIOLOGY AND GENETICS OF ATOPIC DERMATITIS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Atopic dermatitis (AD), commonly known as eczema, has become an important public health problem because of its increasing prevalence world-wide. Literature has shown a steep incline in developed countries attributing it to different genetic and environmental risk factors. With this in view, we embarked on a journey to collect a large cross-sectional study population, so as to determine the prevalence and to identify epidemiological risk factors associated with eczema in Singapore.

AD, a highly complex and multi-factorial disease, has different pathogenic mechanisms at play simultaneously. The more recently described complex mechanism of barrier dysfunction has gained wide acceptance in the scientific community. With this as the working hypothesis, I identified and validated important barrier-related genes associated with AD in Singapore Chinese. Variants of one of the most significant genes found, carbonic anhydrase 6 (CA6) were then functionally characterised linking to disease phenotype.

Simultaneously, replication study of leads from genome wide association study on ethnic Chinese was also conducted. Filaggrin (FLG), a widely studied gene for AD was also evaluated in our study population.