SCIENTISTS AT Dundee University have taken a step closer to understanding eczema and related allergic diseases with the discovery that people from different ethnic backgrounds have different mutations of the gene that causes the debilitating skin disorder.

Professor Irwin McLean and his team from the College of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing at Dundee University, together with Dr Alan Irvine in Dublin, have used a ground-breaking new method to examine the filaggrin gene.

The team made a major breakthrough last year when they reported that defects in the filaggrin gene can cause dry skin, eczema, eczema-associated asthma and other allergies. Their continued work has now shown that within the gene there can be several faults and that eczema sufferers of different ethnic backgrounds will have different faults within the gene.

They have found, so far, 15 different mutations within the gene—if you have a mutation in your gene, you have a 60 per cent chance of having eczema. If you have two mutations in your gene, you have an almost 100 per cent chance of having eczema.

Of the mutations, five were prevalent in the European patients examined, who were mainly from the UK and Ireland, and nine per cent of the population were shown to carry these gene defects. There were also two mutations prevalent in the Oriental populations that were tested. Other mutations in the gene were found in single families and so are very rare or family specific.

Eczema affects one in five children in the UK alone and is just as common in most parts of the world. In the UK and Irish populations, the Dundee and Dublin groups have shown that the filaggrin gene is involved in about half of the severe, difficult-to-treat cases of eczema.

The knowledge that Irwin McLean’s team is building will help them develop a full picture of the disease, enable genetic testing, and take them closer to discovering new, more effective treatments in years to come. Their findings will be published in Nature magazine.