Inflammatory skin diseases affect a large proportion of the population, for instance the prevalence of eczema is 20%. However, objective disease measurements to assess severity are lacking for this common inflammatory skin condition. In this study, we assess the use of a non-invasive optical method to characterize different biomarkers in eczema patients. Raman spectroscopy which measures molecular bond vibrations was used to assess different disease characteristics including keratin, ceramide, protein and water content. Eczema patients showed a lower amount of lipid content (eg. ceramides), and asymmetric protein and bound water. These findings will be further explored to correlate with disease severity.
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