Natural rubber latex allergy: Table 1

The history of natural-rubber-latex (NRL) allergy is relatively short; the first case reports appeared in 1979–1980 in the European (Nutter 1979; Forstrom 1980) and in 1989 in the North American (Slater 1989; Spaner et al. 1989; Taylor et al. 1989) literature. During the last 10 years, NRL allergy has become acknowledged as a major occupational problem among glove-using health-care workers. In addition, several authors have paid attention to the fact that NRL allergy also frequently occurs outside the health-care environment. Populations at increased risk include not only glove-using kitchen workers and housekeeping personnel (Turjanmaa 1988; Sussman and Beezhold 1995; Taylor and Praditsuwan 1996) but also children, who may exhibit allergic reactions when blowing balloons (Axelsson et al. 1988; Sorva et al. 1995). Even patients allergic to various fruits, such as banana and avocado, may experience allergic reactions to NRL and vice versa (M’Raihi et al. 1991; Blanco et al. 1994a; Makinen-Kiljunen 1994; Lavaud et al. 1995).