Cold atmospheric plasma as an eczema treatment

As any science teacher will tell you, there are three main states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.

Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter and is achieved when a gas is heated to the point where its particles become ionized or charged.

Scientists appreciate that 99% of all matter in the known universe – besides Earth – is actually plasma. For example the sun and lightning consist of plasma.

Plasma can also be generated at relatively low temperatures. This “cold” atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a plasma generated at temperatures below 40°C (104°F).

CAP was first used in medicine as a in the 1960s method of sterilization. In the 1990s, the medical community began using CAP as a treatment for various medical conditions. Today, researchers are looking at CAP to:

according to dr Guohua Ni, a lead author of the new study and a professor at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the main purpose of the recent research was to find an effective therapy with fewer side effects for treating atopic dermatitis and other skin diseases.

“Currently, neurodermatitis therapy is mainly based on corticosteroid Hormone for skin coating treatment, but (with) the long-term use of hormone therapy (it) is very possible to induce dyslipidemia, dysarteriotonia (abnormal blood pressure) and glucose abnormality, which also leads (to) excessive loss of calcium,” said Ni Medical news today. “There is an urgent need to find a new and effective therapy for atopic dermatitis with fewer (or even) no side effects.”

What Makes CAP a Viable Treatment Option for Atopic Dermatitis?

“CAP has been widely involved in medical applications,” Ni said. “CAP can promote acute and chronic wound healing, improve oral cleaning and disinfection, and facilitate cancer treatment. CAP has been shown to upregulate the expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) in human dermal fibroblasts. This offers a way to effectively treat [atopic dermatitis] through CAP therapy.”

During the study, Ni and his team said they found that CAP treatment helped heal atopic dermatitis-like skin lesions in a mouse model. In addition, CAP treatment helped relieve skin inflammation, oxidative stressand Stress of the endoplasmic reticulum which normally accompanies an inflammatory response in the body.

Regarding potential side effects, Ni said previous studies have shown CAP therapy to be safe with minimal to no side effects.

“Although we did not examine the side effects in the present work, we believe that the CAP method is safe and has fewer (or even no) side effects in the treatment of atopic dermatitis,” he added.

MNT also spoke to dr. Angela J. Lamb, Associate Professor of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York and Vice Chair of Clinical Strategy and Operations, Dermatology at Mount Sinai in New York.

She said this is an exciting time for eczema research.

“Cold atmospheric plasma shows great promise, and while this is a mouse study, there have been human studies showing improvement in atopic dermatitis in patients treated with CAP,” she explained. “The beauty of this study is that it is well controlled and shows at the molecular level why CAP helps in eczema.”

“This study shows that CAP is increasing Factor 1 alphawhat increases MANF expression‘ Lamb continued. “MANF has been identified as an important protector of the atopic dermatitis signaling pathway by binding to the promoter region of the NF kappa beta.”

Ni said he hopes this research will help advance the clinical application of CAP therapy and provide new ideas for the treatment of atopic dermatitis.

“As a next step, we will further investigate the safety and efficacy of the CAP technology in the treatment of dermatitis and advance its clinical application as soon as possible,” he added.

Lamb added that she would like to see more human studies and specific protocols for treatment, including frequency and time of exposure.

“Finally, it would be nice to see if this has any lasting effects on the skin,” she said. “There are many treatments that only work temporarily. It would be nice to see if this creates some more permanent changes in the skin.”