Study design
This study was embedded within the Generation R Study, a prospective
birth cohort study located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Medical
Ethical Committee of the Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam
approved the study (MEC-2012-165).17 Written informed
consent was obtained from parents or legal representatives of all
children. We included all children with European genetic ancestry18 with information on filaggrin mutation (homozygous,
compound heterozygous, heterozygous or wild type) and information on at
least one of the immune cell outcomes. This resulted in a total number
of 523 children (Figure 1).
Our subgroup of children with AD, defined as physician-diagnosed eczema
from parental questionnaires obtained at the child’s age of 10 years
(‘Was your child ever diagnosed by a physician with atopic dermatitis’,
‘yes; no’) consisted of 102 subjects.16