The Rosacea Forum: Papulopustular,
Telangiectatic, and Phymatous Subtypes

People with rosacea must be careful with their choices of skin-care products, as some can contain ingredients that may trigger a skin reaction and a worsening of their symptoms. Yet there is little data on contact allergy in rosacea patients.

“This is astonishing,” note the authors of a recent study on the topic in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology, “as sensitive and inflamed skin may be more prone to contact sensitization, and coexistence of both phenomena in rosacea patients is probably not uncommon.”

To help supply some data, the authors designed what is perhaps the first prospective study on contact sensitization in rosacea patients. Despite the limited power of the study (which included 78 rosacea patients), the authors found positive allergic reactions to several substances, including nickel sulphate (15.4%), balsam of Peru (10.4%), and fragrance mix (5.2%).

In addition, the rosacea patients had a “strikingly high” prevalence of contact allergy to the topical antibiotic gentamicin sulphate (8%), “probably due to antibiotic treatment of rosacea-associated eye symptoms,” wrote the study’s authors.

Source: Jappe U, Schafer T, Schnuch A, Uter W. Contact allergy in patients with rosacea: a clinic-based, prospective epidemiological study. JEADV. 2008;22:1208-1214.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Medication, Side Effects, Topicals and Creams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.