Allergic contact dermatitis caused by vinyl gloves: a challenge for clinicians

The use of vinyl gloves, considered “hypoallergenic”, has become more and more frequent, both among healthcare workers and among housewives. However, contact allergy to vinyl gloves is not so rare, and it is often difficult to identify the hapten responsible for the allergic dermatitis. We report the case of a healthcare worker with an already known contact allergy to latex gloves, who developed a contact allergy to vinyl gloves several years later. We suggest that, when an allergy to vinyl is suspected, it would be recommended to test the glove itself, due to the difficulty to identify the specific hapten involved in the genesis of the disease.