Introduction
Eczema is a chronic or acute disease of the skin that is accompanied by an inflammatory allergic course. As a rule, it is a suddenly occurring condition of the skin. Eczema can occur on all skin areas of the body.
While eczema of the hand and the upper or lower arms or trunk is relatively common, eczema of the eyelid is relatively rare. As with other eczema types, an acute form is distinguished from a chronic form. In the acute form, the skin on and around the eye reacts with substances that the body considers foreign.
These include above all creams or lotions, as well as various cosmetics, such as eyeliner or mascara. During the first application, the body produces antibodies and memory cells. Here, there is still no occurrence of eye eczema.
But as soon as the substance hits the skin a second time, the memory cells that were previously formed are activated and can stimulate the immune system to an excessive degree. Here, an acute immunological reaction takes place, which takes place on the skin around the eye as follows First, there is a reddening at the point where the substance has hit the skin. After that, the skin is very itchy, sometimes even scaly.
Sometimes the skin then remains in this reddened and itchy state. However, if the itching continues, a blistering effect can occur, which can open up as the itching progresses. 12% of all eczema on the eyelid develops due to contact allergies or hypersensitivity reactions to cosmetics.
The so-called chronic skin eczema must be distinguished from this. It is also caused by substances that meet the skin in the area of the eye, but this is more a toxic reaction than a purely immunological one. Substances that irritate the skin are among the substances that cause chronic eye eczema. In contrast to acute eye eczema, the sequence of symptoms is slightly different. In fact, the symptoms, redness, itching, blister formation and possible blister opening do not occur one after the other but together.
