Changing trends of contact allergens in Thailand: A 12-year retrospective study

Contact allergen prevalences often change. Continual surveillance is necessary to detect trends in sensitization rates and emerging allergens.

To identify the prevalence of, and trends in, the positive reactions to each allergen in the baseline series during a 12-year period in Thailand.

The medical records of 2803 patients who underwent patch testing at the Contact Dermatitis Clinic, Siriraj Hospital, between 2006 and 2018, were retrospectively reviewed. The baseline series used by the clinic was adapted from the European and the International baseline series. The patch testing results were subdivided into 2-year blocks in order to compare the prevalences of each allergen.

The prevalences of positive reactions to nickel, fragrance mixes I and II, dichromate, cobalt, carba mix, methyldibromo glutaronitrile, paraben mix, neomycin sulfate, methylisothiazolinone (MI), epoxy resin, N-isopropyl-N-phenyl-4-phenylenediamine and the corticosteroids significantly decreased. Methylchloroisothiazolinone (MCI)/MI was the only allergen associated with a significant increase of positive reactions, from 2.4% to 10.7%. However, the proportion of positive reactions to MCI/MI decreased in the final 2-year period.

Approximately half of the substances in the screening patch test series showed a decline in the number of positive reactions, whereas MCI/MI showed an increasing prevalence.