- Researchers enrolled 50 children aged 4 to 15 years with physician-diagnosed atopic dermatitis.
- Apple Watches measured nighttime scratching using accelerometer-derived metrics including scratch count rate, scratch duration ratio, and scratch burden index.
- Scratching metrics showed moderate correlations with baseline Eczema Area and Severity Index scores, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.60 to 0.64.
- Declines in nighttime scratching paralleled clinical improvement during topical therapy, with correlations ranging from 0.67 to 0.71.
- Scratching measures also correlated with serum thymus and activation-regulated chemokine biomarker levels.
- The scratch burden index model demonstrated the strongest predictive performance for clinically meaningful improvement, with an area under the curve of 0.78.
- Researchers emphasized that wearable-derived scratching measures remain exploratory and require larger prospective validation studies before clinical use.
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