Atopic Dermatitis

Causes and Aggravating Factors

 

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic fluctuating disease, which may occur at any age. The age of onset is between 6 and 12 months in the majority of cases. In most cases, the disease is cured by the age of 2-4. If not cured by school age, the disease persists into adult life. Some cases are now drawing attention in which the onset of this disease is junior/senior high school age or older. When the clinical features last until young adulthood, it is called adult-type atopic dermatitis. This is a persistent skin disease characterized by a red face with the additional symptoms of diffuse flush and wet erythema. It has been said that atopic red face is a symptom of contact dermatitis caused by perspiration, house dust, animal dander, or cosmetics. I believe that, in addition, chemical sensitivity should be considered as a cause.

 

 

Atopic Dermatitis

Causes

Face

None

Total

Dog dander

 

1

1

Stress

16

4

20

Cat dander

6

1

7

Perm

1

 

1

Shaving

1

 

1

Pool

1

3

4

Dust

3

 

3

Hot spring

1

 

1

Chemical subs.

10

2

12

Cosmetic

3

 

3

Flower

2

 

2

Machine oil

2

 

2

Air, water

1

 

1

Plants

1

 

1

Short of sleep

2

 

2

Cutting oil

1

 

1

Scratch

1

 

1

Sunburn

3

 

3

Agri.chemical

1

 

1

Perspiration

14

8

22

Irreg. style

12

4

16

Unknown

1

1

2

Club activity

1

 

1

Drug

1

 

1

Total

85

24

109

As a school doctor for a local junior high school with about 1,000 students, I conduct internal checkups for the students every year. 7-8 students were diagnosed with atopic dermatitis, which suggests that the incidence of the disease is 0.7-0.8% for junior high students. Since the percentage gradually increases for high school and college students and adults, there must be some social factors (such as stress) other than allergic reactions. It is necessary to find the aggravating factors of atopic dermatitis to prevent or treat it. I questioned the atopic patients visiting my clinic who are junior high school age or older, and investigated what kinds of causes triggered the atopic symptoms.

 

I divided the data into two groups depending upon whether reddening of the face was present or not.

Face = eruptions are found on both the face and the body.

None = eruptions are found only on the body.

The chart on the right shows the results.

Discussion:

 

Patients with atopic diathesis are sensitive to substances, which hardly affect normal people. It is considered that pollen, ticks, certain foods, house dust, animal dander, chemical substances; stress, etc. aggravate atopic dermatitis. Atopic patients may feel itchy at the slightest irritation. The more they scratch, the worse their symptoms become, and the function of the skin as a barrier is weakened. As a result, the disease becomes more persistent. I have long been stressing the need to find out the causes and the aggravating factors of atopic dermatitis. This survey led me to conclude the following.

 

Causes and aggravating factors of adult-type atopic dermatitis include high temperature and high humidity, house dust, sensitivity to chemicals, sensitivity to electromagnetic waves, perspiration, stress, cosmetics, irregular lifestyle.

 

Some of the atopic patients I surveyed were hypersensitive to animal dander, although this has not been recognized before. Students sometimes perspired a lot when exercising, and long exposure to sunlight made their symptoms worse. In the case where eruptions were found only on the body (without red face or facial eruption), stress, perspiration and irregular lifestyle were found to be the aggravating factors of atopic dermatitis. . There were many cases in which the symptoms of junior or senior high school students got worse when they swam in the swimming pool. I believe this was a case of contact dermatitis being caused by a bactericide added to the water.

Patients should attempt to minimize the aggravating factors as much as possible

.

Japanese