Patch Testing with Thimerosal in a Canadian Center: An 11-Year Experience
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Thimerosal has been used for decades as an antiseptic, a disinfectant, and a preservative in various consumer products. It is also a notoriously frequent contact allergen, but the significance of positive patch-test reactions has been debated over the past decade. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and relevance of positive patch-test reactions to thimerosal in a large Canadian center and to compare our results with those of previous publications. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of data collected over the course of 11 years in the contact dermatitis clinic of a university hospital was performed. RESULTS: Of 2252 subjects patch-tested for thimerosal, positive reactions were observed in 102 individuals (4.53%), placing thimerosal as the fifth most common allergen in our practice. The sensitization rate was equivalent between the patients who underwent aimed patch testing and those who were routinely tested for reaction to thimerosal when this allergen was included in our standard patch-testing series 8 years into the study. There was an increased incidence of thimerosal sensitization in chemists and laboratory technicians, as well as in health care workers, including medical doctors, registered nurses, dentists, and dental assistants. While eight reactions were deemed possibly relevant, in none of the cases was it possible to definitely establish the relevance of positive reactions to thimerosal, either because the presence of this allergen could not be verified in patients' products or because patch testing with these products gave negative results. CONCLUSION: In agreement with previous reports, we conclude that even though positive reactions to thimerosal are frequent, very few seem to be clinically relevant.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".