Contact allergy to corticosteroids in asthma/rhinitis patients

Abstract

Patients with asthma and/or rhinitis, when using inhalers or nasal sprays containing corticosteroids, may experience mucosal symptoms, such as congestion of the nose, itching, nose bleeding and worsening of rhinitis, but also eczema of the face sometimes spreading to flexures, and sometimes the corticosteroid simply does not help. Few patients with such symptoms have been found to be allergic to their inhaled corticosteroids (1), and no report on whether contact allergy to corticosteroids could explain treatment failures is available. This issue was investigated in 2 ways: (i) by testing asthma/rhinitis patients for corticosteroid allergy, (ii) by looking at the prevalence of tixocortol pivalate allergy among dermatitis patients with and without asthma/rhinitis, respectively.