The personality of the patient with atopic dermatitis
The personality of the patient with atopic dermatitis

Summary/Abstract: Atopic dermatitis (AD), the inflammatory chronic disease which has a growing predominance, especially in the urban areas, is considered a representative condition for the psychocutaneous or psychosomatic disorders, having a negative impact on the quality of the patients’ life. The condition has an incompletely elucidated pathogenesis, which involves complex interactions between ambient factors and general factors in genetically predisposed people. It is clinically characterized by cutaneous lesions of eczema type with an unpredictable evolution, exacerbation and periods of remission, expression of the epidermis barrier function alterations and of an inflammatory cutaneous infiltrate. The dominant symptom is the tenacious pruritus which maintains and aggravates the inflammatory process. An important pathogenic role in AD is nowadays attributed to the modified biological answer to stress that could be correlated with an increased vulnerability to develop and exacerbate the dermatosis symptoms and with a distinct personality profile of atopic patients as well. The pathogenic role of this personality profile in the illness development, the direct and indirect effects of the emotional stress on the cutaneous immune reactivity, on the neuropeptides expression in the skin and on its barrier function, also the identification of some therapeutic potential targets that allow the AD treatment reconfiguration, all these represent some intensely debated topics in the scientific literature.

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