Association between self-reported drug hypersensitivity reactions and psychological disorders

Medically unexplained physical symptoms are a well-recognized problem and, in some cases, there is a well-established relationship between behavior and psychopathological disturbances. However, the association between drug hypersensitivity reactions and psychoactive disorders stills under discussion.

Our main goal was to establish if there is an association between self-reported drug hypersensitivity reaction and psychopathology with need for psychoactive drug consumption.

Retrospective study of adult patients evaluated in a first Immunoallergology appointment because of self-reported drug hypersensitivity over 1 year and register of data concerning psychoactive drugs use. Compare the study group with patients observed for allergic respiratory disease along the same year.

The study group included 70 patients that referred a total of 92 self-reported drug hypersensitivity reactions. Twenty-nine (41.4%) were under treatment with psychoactive drugs: 20 (70%) were treated with anxiolytics, 13 (18.6%) with antidepressants, 15 (21.4%) with sedatives, and 1 (1.4%) with antipsychotics. The control group included 160 patients and 38 patients (23.8%) were under treatment with psychoactive drugs: 31 (19.4%) where treated with antidepressants, 29 (18.1%) with anxiolytics, and 3 (1.9%) with sedatives. The use of psychoactive drugs in the study group is higher than in the control group (p = 0.007), the difference is especially important for sedative drugs (p < 0.001). Besides a higher use of psychoactive drugs, the study group also has a higher frequency of use of several psychoactive drug (p = 0.002).

Patients with a self-report drug hypersensitivity have more tendency to be under treatment with psychoactive drugs and could have more tendency to somatization. Personality traces and psychopathology must be taken into account during an allergy workup.