Validation of liquid-phase method of skin blot samples

Abstract

　Skin blotting is a method to non-invasively evaluate local cytokines and other substances in the skin. Still, its clinical application is difficult due to the need for advanced immunostaining techniques. The liquid-phase method, which collects skin blot samples in liquid form, has the potential for simple testing, but the validity of liquid-phase method needs to be clarified. This study evaluated the validity of the liquid-phase method by assessing (1) the recovery rate of liquid-phase protein and (2) the correlation between the amount of applied protein and that of protein recovered by the liquid-phase method, using five types of proteins. The results showed that (1) while the recovery rate of urease was significantly lower (P = 0.046), (2) there was a significant, high correlation (0.90 ≤ r ≤ 0.98; P < 0.05) between the amount of applied and liquidphased proteins for all proteins. Therefore, the validity of the liquid-phase skin blot sample method was demonstrated quantitatively.