Treating Infant Eczema

Tomato Juice. – Tomato should never be given to any child with atopic dermatitis. Skin tests to tomato are uncommon, but for some unknown reason it produces skin rashes with great frequency, possibly due to the pigment it contains, possibly due to whatever it is that gives it its charac­teristic taste.

Fig.   23.-This  papular  eruption  was  entirely   due  to   the   ingestion   of   wheat.     There   was   no “eczema on  any other part  of the body.     It can  be compared  to  a  fixed  drug eruption.
Wheat.-Wheat   sensitivity   is   im­portant in many eczematous babies, and in not a few older children. A positive scratch test is usually signifi­cant. [...]

Egg White.-Egg white should be kept out of the diet of all these babies, unless there is a definitely negative scratch test to it, and it is best to do this two or three times be­fore giving the baby egg. Hard-boiled egg yolk is usually tolerated; soft-boiled egg yolk should not be given, as it [...]

Foods Eaten by the Cow as a Cause of Eczema.-It has been said that eczema may be due to sensitivity to foods eaten by the cow-particularly linseed or cottonseed. I see no reason why this should not be so. However, I have never seen a patient in whom I thought it was so, and once [...]

A few foods are important enough to deserve special discussion.
Milk.-Milk contains four proteins: lactalbumin, casein, lactoglobulin, and opalisin. Opalisin exists only in traces, lactoglobulin in very small amounts; it is probable that they are of little or no importance in allergy. Lactal­bumin and casein are the important ones, and of these lactalbumin is by far [...]

Many positive skin tests to foods are of no etiological significance. This is not so likely to be true for babies as for older children. It is probably best in dealing with babies to omit those foods which have given well-marked positive scratch tests, provided there are not too many of them, and see what [...]

The egg white reaction is so important in the atopic dermatitis of infants that it warrants special discussion. It has been found (Moro, Woringer, Hill) that most infants who have atopic dermatitis give strongly positive skin reactions to egg white, the majority of which are accompanied by circulat­ing reagins and clinical sensitivity. Many of these [...]

Skin testing is often a valuable procedure in atopic derma­titis as a help in planning treatment. Its value has, however, been greatly exaggerated, too much attention has been paid to it, and harm has been done, particularly in babies and in young children by too rigorous diet­ing solely on the basis of skin tests. What [...]

In order to make an attempt to understand the rationale of immunologic treatment it is first necessary to consider in some detail the immunophysiologic principles involved. The antibody (atopic reagin) which has to do with atopic dermatitis is fixed in the vascular loops in the papillae of the corium, and can often also be detected [...]

“Immunology is a mixture of established fact, half knowledge, hopeful guessings and frank bewilderment.”
-W. W. C. Tapley:    An Outline of Immunity, William   Wood  & Co.,  1933.
Atopic dermatitis is brought about by the same abnormal constitu­tion which underlies hay fever and asthma, and is often the first mani­festation of this constitution. It is not uncommon for [...]