Eczema and skin allergy-focus on research

The first thought when we think about a focused journal on skin allergy, including eczemas, is how long this could be sustained. However, the increasing trend in submission and the sheer diversity of articles that are being received for consideration for publication in the Indian Journal of Skin Allergy reiterates the immense amount of interest, current research initiatives, and focus in this field. There is so much to learn and unlearn in this field. A testament to the need for a spotlight on cutaneous allergy and eczema is the usage statistics of this free access journal, with a total of 538,759 downloads, including 472,372 PDF downloads to date.^[1]

This issue has a spotlight on the effect of ultraviolet radiation in the causation of skin allergy, with a symposium curated by our guest editor, Professor Sathish Pai, including updated reviews by experts on photobiology, phototoxicity and photoallergy, polymorphous light eruptions, chronic actinic dermatitis, and investigations and treatment of photodermatoses. We thank Professor Sathish B Pai for the excellent synopsis on the full spectrum of photodermatoses and hope it will serve as a ready reckoner for practitioners managing any photo-aggravated dermatoses, as also a handy synopsis for postgraduates and also stimulate research initiatives in this domain. With the increasing use of cosmetics, medications, and other lifestyle modifications, the incidence of pigmented contact dermatitis is steadily increasing, and the article on pigmented contact dermatitis focuses on its management, including what’s new in this field. With the recent advances in the pathogenesis and management of atopic dermatitis, we have articles presenting the first Indian data pertaining to the response of the pediatric disease to crisabarole ointment and the impact of atopic dermatitis on quality of life in patients and their family members. Indeed, despite the prolific research and publications in atopic dermatitis, there are still a lot of gaps in research and management guidelines and we hope to encourage research publications that fill the unmet needs in atopic dermatitis research. Chronic urticaria is another challenging dermatosis with a lot of scope of research, and an article in this issue presents data detailing the treatment response of an old drug like methotrexate in chronic refractory urticaria and another reports the clinical profile of heat urticaria. It is hoped that the current networking of researchers with an interest focus on urticaria research will generate more data and higher evidence of drug efficacy in its management and also bring out variations based on ethnicity and race.

Adverse drug reactions are another area with fascinating presentations, and the polymorphic presentation could delay the diagnosis, thereby impairing the quality of life of the patient and resulting in significant morbidity. This is especially relevant with the increasing use of small molecules and biologics. Two interesting case reports in this issue, document cutaneous adverse drug reactions to a Janus kinase inhibitor and a multikinase inhibitor. A heightened, multicentric effort to document the adverse effects of these drugs, which are increasingly being used, is the need of the hour. Further, the perception that cutaneous adverse drug reactions in children to systemic drugs are rare often results in their underdiagnosis, and we hope that the excellent review on this topic by Chiriac et al.^[2] would serve to update the clinician on their presentation and management and also encourage more documentation in literature of variations in cutaneous adverse drug presentation, as compared to adults. We look forward to receiving an increase in innovative research reports in the very interesting field of skin allergy and eczemas and welcome feedback at editor@skinallergyjournal.com