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Patch test materials for mercury allergic contact dermatitis
Author(s) -
Nakada Tokio,
Higo Naotaka,
Lijima Masafumi,
Nakayam Hideo,
Maibach Howard I.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
contact dermatitis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1600-0536
pISSN - 0105-1873
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0536.1997.tb00208.x
Subject(s) - mercury (programming language) , allergic contact dermatitis , contact dermatitis , chemistry , chloride , patch test , dermatology , penetration (warfare) , sensitization , allergy , medicine , immunology , organic chemistry , operations research , computer science , engineering , programming language
The objective of this study was to define adequate patch test materials to evaluate mercury allergic contact dermatitis. We applied 0.1% and 0.05% mercuric chloride, and 0.5% and 0.2% mercury in petrolatum to systemic eczematous contact‐type dermatitis (baboon syndrome), and gold‐dermatitis patients. All baboon‐syndrome patients reacted not only to mercuric chloride but also to metallic mercury. In gold‐dermatitis patients, significantly more patients reacted to mercuric chloride than to metallic mercury (21 of 35, 60%, versus 2 of 19, 10.5%, p < 0.0005). We speculated that sensitization to mercury may be of 2 types: one a reaction to ionized mercury only, the other to both ionized mercury and non‐ionized mercury. The possibility that the phenomenon is caused by differences in bioavailability or percutaneous penetration between ionized and non‐ionized mercury cannot be ruled out, but could be explored by penetration measurement. For the evaluation of mercury hypersensitivity it may be more reliable to apply both ionized and non‐ionized mercury rather than only mercuric chloride or ammoniated mercury.