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Eczema Facts

4-part series on What Causes Your Child’s Eczema – Allergy

Role of allergens according to age and severity of AD (taken from Table 3 of article “Features of childhood atopic dermatitus”

This is a 4-part (a little more technical) series inspired by a review article “Features of childhood atopic dermatitis” by Hugo Van Bever and Genevieve Illanora. The article summarizes 4 players involved in atopic dermatitis, and I’ve tried to understand whatever I could from the article and hopefully digested the information accurately for you to read.

Does Allergy Cause Eczema?

The answer is we don’t know. If you refer to the first part of this series, allergy is hypothesized to be caused by eczema (rather than causing eczema). What has been observed is that the more severe eczema is, the higher the chances of allergies (as shown in table above). Allergies can be to food (which in the article “Features of childhood atopic dermatitis” summarized that it can be from direct eating/drinking, breast milk, placenta, inhaling and even kissing!), to house dust mites, dander and a whole lot of others (I’ve freaked myself out when researching what my baby girl Marcie could be allergic to).

Marcie’s Allergy

As it turned out, Marcie is not allergic to anything! She had a skin prick test done, something which I always recommend other parents to do because it takes a lot of guess work out. True that skin prick test is not 100% fail-proof, but it’s better than going mad worrying about everything cos if you google, you will most surely find something written or a post by someone that their child is allergic to something.

Here are some previous posts on skin prick test and eczema triggers that may interest you:

Taking the fear out of skin prick test

What triggers itch?

If your child has eczema, can you have a pet dog?

Is partially hydrolysed milk worth the money?

What and how much Detergent to Use?

Is it what you ate? How pregnancy diet affect eczema in baby

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