Development of a noninvasive device and method for measuring immune parameters in skin disease

Diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of skin disease, including psoriasis and atopic dermatitis (AD), currently depend on clinical evaluation. Access to easily accessible and reliable biomarkers would facilitate diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of disease activity. Currently used methods to collect biomarkers from the skin include taking biopsies, tape stripping, and collecting suction blister fluid. These methods cause discomfort and are not suitable for longitudinal monitoring. In this paper, we designed a skin wash device and method to noninvasively collect biomarkers from skin. We validated our device and method by application of recombinant cytokines on skin of healthy individuals. Thereafter, we determined the skin inflammatory profiles in patients with AD and patients with psoriasis and compared these with those of healthy control volunteers. We show that with our method, elevated concentrations of inflammatory cytokines were detected in samples obtained from patients with AD or psoriasis, and we were able to distinguish between these 2 patient groups on the basis of their cytokine profiles. We propose that our skin wash device and method is highly promising to improve the diagnostics, treatment, and monitoring of skin diseases. Furthermore, it could be used in other research areas leading to more insight in the (immune)pathogenesis of skin diseases.