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Abstract
Clinical surveillance of the prevalence of contact allergy in consecutively patch tested patients is a proven instrument to continually assess the importance of contact allergens (haptens) assembled in a baseline series. To present current results from the European Surveillance System on Contact Allergies, including 13 countries represented by 1 to 11 departments. Anonymized or pseudonymized patch test and clinical data from various data capture systems used locally or nationally as transferred to the Erlangen data centre were pooled and descriptively analysed after quality control. In the 4 years (2015-2018), data from 51 914 patients patch tested with the European baseline series (EBS) of contact allergens were analysed. Contact allergy to nickel was most frequent (17.6% positive), followed by contact allergy to fragrance mix I (6.9%), methylisothiazolinone (MI; 6.2%), and Myroxylon pereirae resin (balsam of Peru; 5.8%). While the prevalence of MI contact allergy decreased substantially following regulatory intervention, the persistently high levels of allergy to metals, fragrances, other preservatives, and rubber chemicals point to problems needing further research and, potentially, preventive efforts. Results with national additions to the baseline series provide important information on substances possibly to be considered for inclusion in the EBS.
Highlights
The value of surveillance of contact allergy using scientific networks has been repeatedly illustrated and shall not be further expanded on
The present analysis of routine surveillance data collected by the ESSCA follows up on previous reports and is a continuation of a series of similar reports on data from 2002/2003,16 2004,17 2005/2006,18 2007/2008,19 2009 to 2012,20-25 and lastly, 2013/2014.3 The changing patterns of contact allergy can be observed and interpreted, albeit from the background of a partly changing contribution to the network, which needs to be considered
Compared with the first reporting period, in which a table identical to Table 1 had been incorporated,[16] the share of males slightly dropped from 37.1% to 32.9%, whereas the percentage of patients with occupational dermatitis increased slightly from 13.1% to 16.1%
Summary
The value of surveillance of contact allergy using scientific networks has been repeatedly illustrated (for example, see Uter et al 20201 for a summary on this topic) and shall not be further expanded on. In the United States and Canada, continual reporting by the North American Contact Dermatitis Research Group, for example,[2] provides a regular audit of the value of patch testing, and of the importance of single allergens (possibly in subgroups of the patch tested population) and time trends, as does the work of the European Surveillance System on Contact Allergies (ESSCA, https://www.essca-dc.org) in Europe.[3] A series of reports presenting results of patch testing with the European baseline series (EBS; see[4] for the current version) and partly with national or some local additions to it has been published.
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