Chronic pruritus in atopic dermatitis – mechanisms and different ways of treatment, affect on quality of life

OSTASZEWSKA, Sandra, MORAWSKI, Przemysław, AUGUSTYNOWICZ, Kinga, POPIŃSKA, Zuzanna, CHRZANOWSKI, Jakub, SZYMAŃSKA, Ewa, ŁOGINOFF, Jan, ŚWIĄDER, Kinga & PACTWA, Filip. Chronic pruritus in atopic dermatitis – mechanisms and different ways of treatment, affect on quality of life. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2023;13(4):37-41. eISSN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/JEHS.2023.13.04.003 https://apcz.umk.pl/JEHS/article/view/42263 https://zenodo.org/record/7643267 The journal has had 40 points in Ministry of Education and Science of Poland parametric evaluation. Annex to the announcement of the Minister of Education and Science of December 21, 2021. No. 32343. Has a Journal's Unique Identifier: 201159. Scientific disciplines assigned: Physical Culture Sciences (Field of Medical sciences and health sciences); Health Sciences (Field of Medical Sciences and Health Sciences). Punkty Ministerialne z 2019 - aktualny rok 40 punktów. Załącznik do komunikatu Ministra Edukacji i Nauki z dnia 21 grudnia 2021 r. Lp. 32343. Posiada Unikatowy Identyfikator Czasopisma: 201159. Przypisane dyscypliny naukowe: Nauki o kulturze fizycznej (Dziedzina nauk medycznych i nauk o zdrowiu); Nauki o zdrowiu (Dziedzina nauk medycznych i nauk o zdrowiu). © The Authors 2023; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 29.01.2023. Revised: 29.01.2023. Accepted: 15.02.2023. Chronic pruritus in atopic dermatitis – mechanisms and different ways of treatment, affect on quality of life Sandra Ostaszewska1, Przemysław Morawski2, Kinga Augustynowicz1, Zuzanna Popińska3, Jakub Chrzanowski4, Ewa Szymańska5, Jan Łoginoff3, Kinga Świąder2, Filip Pactwa2 Uniwersytecki Szpital Kliniczny im. Wojskowej Akademii Medycznej – Centralny Szpital Weteranów, Łódź, Poland Faculty of Medicine, Uniwersytet Medyczny w Łodzi, Poland Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia Szpital Bielański im. Ks. Jerzego Popiełuszki, Warszawa, Poland Uniwersytecki Szpital Kliniczny w Opolu, Poland Introduction: Pruritus in atopic dermatitis is one of the main symptoms of the disease and the one that causes a significant impact on quality of life. It is important to control itching because it’s not only an unplesant sense. Scratching topically deepen the dermatitis, damages the epidermal barrier causing additional infections possible and makes it harder to acheive a remission of the disease. It is also highly associated with stress and has an impact on mental health of the patient. In this article we present a summary of how pruritus affects the quality of life, mechanism of pruritus and possible treatment. Materials and methods: Our work is based on the articles published in PubMed, medical books and websites. We were looking for the key words such as ‘stress and itch’, ‘pruritus treatment’, ‘chronic itch in atopic dermatitis’, ‘itch and quality of life’. Results: Patients with atopic dermatitis should come under miltidisciplinar treatment to acheive the best possible control of symptoms. This will result in higher quality of life and better mental health of the patient. Conclusions: There is a high need to develop new targeted medications as contemporary medicine knows a lot more about the mechanism of pruritus. Many new types of treatment are being studied and soon we may have more options to choose in systemic and topical therapy. We should also concetrate more on a mental side of the disease