MedWire News: Young children with the itchy, flaky skin of allergic dermatitis often also suffer symptoms of hayfever, researchers reveal.

People with allergic dermatitis, also known as atopic dermatitis or atopic eczema, have dry skin with recurring flare ups of itchiness and scratching that can lead to skin damage and infections.

The condition is common in young children and often disappears by 3 years of age, but the children may then develop asthma or hayfever - in a sequence known as 'the atopic march'.

Dr Diego Peroni and colleagues from the University of Verona in Italy have now shown that the sneezing and runny or blocked nose associated with hayfever often overlap with atopic dermatitis.

The results, reported in the British Journal of Dermatology, are based on questionnaires filled out by the parents of 1402 three-to-five-year-olds from 18 nursery schools close to Verona, Italy.

Almost one in five of the children had atopic dermatitis, and most of these had suffered an itchy rash in the typical places - the folds of the elbows, behind the knees and around the neck, ears or eyes.

The researchers say that almost a third of the children with atopic dermatitis also had hayfever symptoms and about a quarter wheezed, which is a symptom of asthma.

Analysis suggested that children with hayfever symptoms, those who had allergies that ran in the family, and those with allergies to egg, cat, grass pollen or mites were those most likely to have atopic dermatitis.

Peroni and co-workers say: "We demonstrated a high prevalence of atopic dermatitis and a close relationship with rhinitis [hayfever] symptoms."

They say that researchers should now look at the relationship between atopic dermatitis and the later development of asthma.