Allergy on contact
13 Oct 2010 by Evoluted New Media
Fragrances in household and skin care products can cause skin allergies and eczema say scientists from the University of Gothenburg, who are developing new tools to help diagnose contact allergies.
Fragrances in household and skin care products can cause skin allergies and eczema say scientists from the University of Gothenburg, who are developing new tools to help diagnose contact allergies.
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Cleaning and skincare products can cause eczema |
Contact allergies – where patients develop eczema after coming into contact with substances they are allergic to – affect nearly 20% of the European population. The only option to treat eczema is cortisone cream, but researchers from the Faculty of Science hope that their work will lead to new treatments for the condition.
Researchers studied how like fragrances in household and skincare products can be activated by oxygen in the air and whether they caused contact allergy in eczema patients.
“In a bid to gain a deeper understanding of how contact allergy occurs, we are now using state-of-the-art microscopic equipment to follow what happens to an allergen once it gets into the skin,” said Ann-Therese Karlberg, professor of dermochemistry and skin allergy in the Department of Chemistry.
They found a high percentage had an allergic reaction to the substances. But when determining how allergenic a substance is, scientists must also consider the skin’s ability to activate a substance through the metabolism. In order to do this, researchers developed a mixture that reflects the content of real skin enzymes and used it to investigate whether the substances can be activated in the skin and become allergenic.
Their discovery will help in diagnosing allergic contact eczema through the development of new diagnostic tools and reduce the number of cases of allergenic contact eczema in the long term. It will also mean that patients can avoid exposure to substance that trigger their allergy, giving their eczema a chance to heal.
“Future work will see us evaluating the new diagnostic methods and carrying out in-depth studies of what goes on in the skin. This will enable us to develop new medicines and replace the only treatment that is currently available for eczema, namely cortisone cream,” said Karlberg.
