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Relationship between 2,4-dinitrochlorobenzene elicitation responses and individual irritant threshold
H R Smith1, D A Kelly, A R Young
1St John's Institute of Dermatology, St Thomas' Hospital, London, UK.
Abstract:
Contact dermatitis shows significant interindividual variation. We studied the relationship between an individual's irritant threshold and the elicitation of experimentally induced allergic sensitization. The results suggest that there is an association between reactivity to an irritant and the likelihood of positive elicitation reactions to lower hapten concentrations. This novel finding would be compatible with the proposal that contact allergy is best explained using a danger model with cutaneous irritancy determining sensitization. However, the enhanced allergic reactivity of individuals with a lower irritant threshold was not apparent on visual inspection, suggesting that the determinants of skin reactivity to haptens are multifactorial.