| Title: | The genetic landscape of chronic pruritic dermatoses |
| Lead Institution: | Johns Hopkins University |
| Principal investigator: | Dr Shawn Kwatra |
Application 67988
WARNING: the interactive features of this website use CSS3, which your browser does not support. To use the full features of this website, please update your browser.
About
Itch is a common symptom of many skin diseases and causes significant distress to patients. Patients with chronic itchy skin disease often report sleep difficulties, depressed mood, and an overall lower quality of life. Examples of such diseases include eczema, psoriasis, and allergic contact dermatitis. This is compounded by a lack of effective treatment options for itch, because the biology of itchy skin diseases is poorly understood. In order to gain a better understanding of these diseases, we will examine the genetic data of patients with certain itchy skin diseases. We aim to discover new mutations that may be linked to these diseases. This is accomplished by comparing the genetic data of patients with itchy skin disease to genetic data of the UK population without itchy skin disease, in order to identify specific DNA mutations associated with the disease. These mutations can be then used to generate risk scores that yield the likelihood that a patient will develop itchy skin disease. Additionally, association of mutations with specific patient characteristics can also be found using demographic, questionnaire, and laboratory data. Also, mutations in specific genes may suggest that those genes are not functioning properly. Such genes can then be investigated further, improving our understanding over itchy skin diseases so that effective treatments can be developed. The expected duration of this project is approximately 12 months.1 Publication
| Pub ID | Title | Author(s) | Year | Journal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11496 | A Polygenic Risk Score for Predicting Racial and Genetic Susceptibility to Prurigo Nodularis | Chirag Vasavda (+19) | 2023 | Journal of Investigative Dermatology |
Enabling scientific discoveries that improve human health