Itchy Pruritic Skin Diseases

Skin diseases with strong pruritus have a major impact on the quality of life in patients. Furthermore, pruritus can severely and negatively affect the course of skin diseases through secondarily occurring skin lesions as a result of the itching. The diagnostic pathway for pruritus is often difficult, since many factors can contribute to the induction of itch. In addition, pruritus treatment is often not easy for clinicians, since it does not present uniformly but may be different in many aspects. For example, patients with pruritus in atopic dermatitis often scratch their skin until bleeding occurs while patients with urticaria do not scratch but rather rub their skin in response to the pruritus. In this article we highlight new findings of pruritus research covering immunological and neuronal backgrounds in relation to clinical diseases including urticaria, and atopic dermatitis.