Nickel Allergy From A Cell Phone

Nickel Allergy From A Cell Phone.
If you're an incessant apartment phone purchaser and a enigmatic rash appears along your jaw, cheek or ear, chances are you're allergic to nickel, a metal commonly hand-me-down in chamber phones. While allergists have long been familiar with nickel allergy, "cell phone rash" is just starting to show up on their radar screen, said Dr Luz Fonacier, forefront of allergy and immunology at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, NY medworldplus.com. "Increased use of cubicle phones with infinite handling plans has led to prolonged baring to the nickel in phones," said Fonacier, who is scheduled to debate the condition in a larger presentation on skin allergies Nov 14, 2010 at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual congress in Phoenix.

Symptoms of stall phone allergy involve a red, bumpy, itchy rash in areas where the nickel-containing parts of a room phone touch the face. It can even modify fingertips of those who text continuously on buttons containing nickel. In grim cases, blisters and itchy sores can develop.

Fonacier said she sees many patients who are allergic to nickel and don't recognize it. "They come in with no image of what is causing their allergic reaction," said Fonacier, also a professor of clinical medication at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Sometimes, she traces her patients' symptoms to their cell phones.

In 2000, a researcher in Italy documented the beginning occasion of cell phone rash, prompting other probe on the condition. In a 2008 ruminate on published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, US researchers tested for nickel in 22 handsets from eight manufacturers; 10 contained the metal. The parts with the most nickel were the menu buttons, decorative logos on the headsets and the metal frames around the transparent crystal exhibition (LCD) screens.

Cell phone deluge is still not well known, said allergist Dr Stanley M Fineman, a clinical partner professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. While he's treated more cases of nickel allergy caused by piercings than by cell phones, "it's great for allergists and dermatologists to have cell phone acquaintance dermatitis on their radar screens," he said.