David Ellinghaus has been given the Egon Macher Award 2014 by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dermatologische Forschung (ADF) and AbbVie Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG for his work on „High-density genotyping study to identify four new susceptibility loci for atopic dermatitis“, which he presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the ADF in Cologne. In collaboration with researchers from England, Ireland and Switzerland as well as the U.S.A, Japan and China, David Ellinghaus and colleagues from Kiel and Berlin carried out what is so far the world’s largest genetic study on atopic dermatitis, with almost 10,000 patients and more than 20,000 healthy individuals. The results of the study have been published in the journal Nature Genetics (7/2013).

The researchers identified four additional gene loci and confirmed two further loci for patients from Europe and North America, which were initially only known for patients from Asia. The results of the current study show that patients with atopic dermatitis not only exhibit inherited disturbances of the skin barrier function, but also abnormalities of the immune system.

For more information see also under "Cross-phenotype Studies"