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 The “hypoallergenic” label is not regulated by the FDA, said Carsten
Hamann, a medical student at the Loma Linda University School of
Medicine in California and the lead researcher on the study.
He and his colleagues tested products that might be used by kids
with eczema, which affects 17.8 million people in the U.S.,
according to the National Eczema Association. Patients have patches
of red, itchy skin, often on the arms, legs, cheeks, and behind the
ears.
“Kids who have eczema or atopic dermatitis use more lotions and
creams and ointments, etc. Ostensibly, their caregivers who purchase
these products to use on the kids' skin, give preference to products
using these meaningless marketing terms,” Hamann told Reuters Health
in an email.
Doctors generally advise people with eczema to apply moisturizer to
inflamed areas of skin. But people with eczema tend to have a higher
risk of so-called “contact allergies.” That is, they may have
allergic reactions to substances that come in contact with their
skin, including fragrances, preservatives, and other kinds of
chemicals.
For the new study, researchers tested 187 cosmetic products found in
six different stores in California, to see if they contained any of
the 80 most common known allergens, as defined by the North American
Contact Dermatitis Group.
All of the products were specifically marketed as being safe for use
in children, and all were labeled as “hypoallergenic,”
“dermatologist recommended/tested,” “fragrance-free,” or “paraben
free.”
Overall, 89 percent of the products contained at least one allergen,
63 percent contained two or more, and 11 percent contained five or
more. The average number of allergens per product was 2.4, the
researchers reported in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology.
Preservatives and fragrances accounted for 58 percent and 29 percent
of the allergens, respectively.
Ten percent of the products contained methylisothizolinone, a
preservative that is about to be banned in the European Union
because it can cause severe skin irritation, according to the
researchers.
“It would be very difficult for even the most caring, intelligent
and well-read parent to know the names of 80-plus allergens and
their synonyms, let alone compare that list of allergens to a
15-plus long ingredient list on the back of a pediatric product,”
Hamann said.
But Dr. Donald Belsito, the Leonard C. Harber Professor of
Dermatology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York,
suggested in comments to Reuters Health that the problem may not be
as bad as it appears.
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The study “really misrepresents a lot of these chemicals because
they’re listing the frequency with which they were found in a
product, not the frequency at which they cause allergy,” Belsito
said in a phone interview.
“Many of the chemicals on that list are very, very rare causes of
allergy,” he added.
Dr. Michael Ardern-Jones, a skin disease specialist at the
University of Southampton in the U.K., agreed that defining
something as an allergen can be complicated.
“Almost any chemical compound could be implicated as an allergen, so
it is almost impossible for a cream to be truly non-allergic,” he
told Reuters Health. “Thus, as there is no true ‘hypoallergenic’
cream, there is no agreed meaning of ‘hypoallergenic.’”
Belsito and Ardern-Jones both say ointments are generally the safest
products. Creams and lotions contain water and therefore must
contain preservatives, making them more likely to contain allergens.
Belsito recommends petroleum-based products such as Vasoline and
generally recommends keeping skincare products simple.
He also noted that the National Eczema Association reviews products
and is a more reliable resource than the product labels.
Ardern-Jones added that prescription moisturizers are usually
reliable. He also recommends that people with eczema or allergies
should “avoid fragranced, colored products and those where the
ingredient listing is not stated.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1AleIoR The Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology, online November 7, 2014.
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