German dermatologist hails value of skin disease research from China

Skin disease research from China over the past few years has been helpful for the international community and is further increasing, said Stephan Weidinger, a professor of dermatology at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Germany, during the 18th Annual Meeting of the China Dermatologist Association and National Congress of Cosmetic Dermatology, which concluded in Shanghai on Sunday.

According to Weidinger, Chinese research is valuable because the studies often involve large numbers of patients owing to the country's population size.

He added that he hopes to carry out joint research projects with Chinese researchers and pursue his idea to set up cohorts of atopic dermatitis (AD) patients in China and Germany to identify the more common and less common subtypes of the disease and their relative proportion.

AD is a common immunoinflammatory disease that seriously affects the health and quality of life of millions of sufferers in the country. The disease is characterized by chronic and recurrent itching and skin injuries.

"Such joint research will be important in the future to make the right selection of treatment for patients when we have more and more targeted treatments," said Weidinger.

Chinese experts said that the prevalence of allergy diseases, such as AD, urticaria, and allergic asthma, have increased significantly in the country over the past two decades owing to industrialization and changes in lifestyle.

There are roughly 70 million adult AD patients in the country and the number of minor patients is also growing, said Zhao Zuotao, a professor from the dermatology department of the Peking University First Hospital.

"Now we have innovative therapeutic options, including biologics and JAK inhibitors, which inhibit the activity of certain enzymes. Such new generation of therapeutic options allow us to control the disease for the long term and at the beginning," said Zhao, who is also a member of the Skin Allergy Committee of the World Allergy Organization.

Controlling the disease early enough may prevent secondary consequences, including asthma and allergy in children and depression, anxiety and other diseases in adults, said the experts.