Dermatitis not likely due to sanitizer

Dear Dr. Roach: Like everyone, I have been using a lot of hand sanitizer and a lot of disinfecting wipes throughout the day. Do these sanitizing products get absorbed through the skin and build up in our bodies? I ask because I have come down with a difficult case of seborrheic dermatitis on my face.

A.H.

Answer:

Hand sanitizers use alcohol to kill bacteria and disable viruses. The alcohols used in approved sanitizers are not well absorbed through the skin, but if they were, your body is able to metabolize the small amounts that come through.

Seborrheic dermatitis is a common skin condition. Although its cause is not well-understood, it is clearly triggered by stress in many people.

Since many of us are stressed from work changes and from dramatic changes to our social interactions, I think it’s more likely to be related to stress than to hand sanitizer use. Any dry skin can cause problems, so using some hand lotion might help.

Dear Dr. Roach:

Are there different antibody tests for the West Coast and East

Coast types of virus? We’ve read that as COVID traveled through Europe, it mutated slightly before it got to New York, but the California version came straight from China.

I had an antibody test on Cape Cod six months after being very sick with a COVID-like virus (not flu) in San Francisco in early December.

My negative result may be because it was done too late, when any antibodies were mostly gone, or possibly it wasn’t COVID. Could it also be that my test wasn’t accurate for the West Coast mutation?

S.K.

Answer: The SARS-CoV-2 virus creates a huge number of replicas of itself when it infects a person. However, the enzyme used to replicate the virus is not perfect, and there are small numbers of mutations, and scientists can track how the virus has spread using thm.

Your reasons for a negative SARS-CoV-2 antibody test are much more likely than it being a new strain that doesn’t show up on testing.