Allergic and Irritant Glove-related Diseases in Health Care Workers and Their Prevention

Because the widespread use of gloves by health care workers has induced an increase of both irritant and type I or type IV allergic glove-related diseases, the Italian Society of Preventive Medicine for Health Care Workers set up a working group to collect information about glove composition and to standardize procedures for the diagnosis and prevention of glove-related disease and job-fitness evaluation of employees who will be wearing gloves. In addition, the group made recommendations for educational programs focusing not only on users but also on purchasers, who presently favor glove selection for economic reasons. The group's recommendations are summarized in a consensus document, but cannot be considered definitive. More research is needed to achieve answers to questions raised by the working group, indicated in the consensus document. In particular, diagnostic criteria must be standardized to plan multicenter studies to verify the real extent of the problem, and further studies are needed to verify whether limit values for substances contained in the gloves (e.g., latex proteins, residual chemicals) can be established.