Clothing

Abstract

Contact dermatitis from clothing is not rare and frequently offers a typical pattern, mainly located in body areas in contact with the garment. With the exception of rubber derivatives, textile fibers mostly induce irritant dermatitis. Among the textile resins, used to enhance the touch and quality of clothing, older ones significantly release formaldehyde, whereas current cyclized urea resins release fewer or no formaldehyde. Disperse dyes (azo or anthraquinone type) are the most employed dyes and the most frequent inducers of textile allergy, due to synthetic fibers. Among disperse azo dyes, Disperse Blue 106/124 are currently the main sensitizers, found in synthetic fibers. Standard series are generally unable to detect textile dyes allergy, and the gold standard is patch testing with the patient's clothing. Systematic addition of textile dye(s) such as Disperse Blue 106/124 can be recommended. Detection of formaldehyde and extraction of dyes from clothing for subsequent identification and patch testing are useful methods to ascertain the diagnosis of textile contact allergy. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.