[Dry hands (irritative contact dermatitis) in housewives which is not alleviated on cessation of domestic work: clinical varieties].

There are three types of hand dermatitis in housewives. The most usual are cured when housework is stopped. Another type is that of housewife contact dermatitis which appears on pre-existing endogenous lesions such as dyshidrosis or nummular eczema. The third form is housewife hand contact dermatitis which appears, or coexists with, localized endogenous lesions of the hands. The last two forms are not cured when housework is stopped. In some cases the three forms may coexist or appear one after another. It is not usual for a person suffering from typical flexural atopic dermatitis to present with one of the described three forms of hand dermatitis. Nevertheless, without having some relationship to atopic diathesis no woman could suffer from any of these three forms of dermatitis. In spite of the lack of analytical data, everyday clinical facts (one example being these different forms of housewife hand dermatitis) suggest the need to accept a subgroup of cutaneous atopic diathesis.