WAILEA, HAWAII – Many atopic dermatitis patients with refractory disease may have also developed allergic contact dermatitis, according to Jonathan Silverberg, MD, of Northwestern University in Chicago.
Clinically, there is often overlap between AD and allergic contact dermatitis, said Dr. Silverberg, who was involved in the development of recent consensus guidelines on when to do patch testing in the setting of AD.
For many patients with severe disease, “sometimes when we patch test, we can find a relevant allergen for the patient to avoid, [and] within a few months, their disease just goes down a notch, gets much better, and really starts to respond to topical and more conservative approaches,” Dr. Silverberg said in a video interview at the Hawaii Dermatology Seminar provided by Global Academy for Medical Education/Skin Disease Education Foundation. Or patients may respond well to AD treatment on certain parts of the body, but there may be other areas that don’t respond as well, suggesting a possible component of allergic contact dermatitis, he added
The guidelines sought to sort out scenarios “where it makes sense to patch test” and to provide direction on best practices, noted Dr. Silverberg, who is director of the Northwestern Medicine Multidisciplinary Eczema Center, and director of the patch testing clinic, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago.
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