A paper about skin health survey on atopic dermatitis among Japanese children has been published in Allergology International.

Atopic dermatitis (AD) often develops by the age of five, with a prevalence rate of approximately 20% in children worldwide. AD diagnoses by dermatologists or physicians serve as the standard diagnosis; however, each dermatologist or physician may diagnose differently owing to the heterogeneous clinical features of AD or differences in their experiences. Therefore, the interobserver concordance of AD diagnosis should be examined; however, to our knowledge, no study has reported on this topic. Moreover, a study examining the concordance of AD diagnoses between physicians and self-reported questionnaires was also limited.
This study (1) examined the interobserver concordance for AD or non-AD diagnoses between two dermatologists, (2) compared AD prevalence based on self-reported physician diagnoses with two dermatologist diagnoses, and (3) compared AD prevalence based on the UK diagnostic criteria*1 with two dermatologist diagnoses.
The data was obtained from the skin health survey*2 which was conducted on Saturdays and Sundays at a community support centre in Sendai. The participants of the skin health survey were enrolled in the TMM BirThree Cohort Study. The concordance for diagnoses was evaluated using kappa. The kappa of the interobserver concordance for AD or non-AD diagnoses between the two dermatologists was 0.78, which indicates substantial concordance. Among the 1,638 children, 24.0%, 11.9%, and 37.2% of them were diagnosed with AD by the two dermatologists, physicians, and the UK diagnostic criteria, respectively. The prevalence of self-reported physician-diagnosed AD was lower than that of dermatologist-diagnosed AD. This may indicate that self-reported physician-diagnosed AD have had difficulties in detecting AD. The prevalence of AD diagnosis using the UK diagnostic criteria was higher than that of dermatologist-diagnosed AD. The UK diagnostic criteria may include other skin diseases as “positive” cases.
Overall, this study revealed again the importance of dermatologists ascertaining skin conditions and identifying complex skin features to detect AD accurately. The accurate and precise phenotypic skin data collected from Japanese children in this skin health survey can be used to explore the etiology of AD.


[Bibliographic information]
Title: Skin health survey on atopic dermatitis among Japanese children: the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Birth and Three-Generation Cohort Study
Authors: Chikana Kawaguchi, Maki Ozawa, Takanori Hidaka, Keiko Murakami, Mami Ishikuro, Fumihiko Ueno, Aoi Noda, Tomomi Onuma, Genki Shinoda, Masatsugu Orui, Taku Obara, Yumiko Ito, Takashi Kakinuma, Kazuhiro Kudoh, Hiroaki Ozawa, Satoshi Nakagawa, Masato Mizuashi, Ryoko Omori, Masatoshi Deguchi, Yumi Kanbayashi, Masayuki Asano, Toshiya Takahashi, Muneo Tanita, Masahiro Hara, Kenshi Yamasaki, Takayoshi Tadaki, Hiromi Suzuki, Katsuko Kikuchi, Kenichiro Tsuchiyama, Takenobu Ohashi, Shu Sasai, Motoko Honda, Taku Fujimura, Sadanori Furudate, Yoshiko Kagimoto, Maki Kawamura, Nobuko Tabata, Rika Chikama, Hiromi Komatsu, Yota Sato, Kayo Tanita, Yutaka Kimura, Shino Yusa, Hitoshi Terui, Hisayuki Tono, Yusuke Muto, Shinichi Kuriyama, Masayuki Yamamoto, Setsuya Aiba
Journal: Allergology International
Publication date: 18 October 2024
DOI: 10.1016/j.alit.2024.09.008
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alit.2024.09.008