title: Chronic medication use and inflammatory skin diseases: the power and limitations of the case-control study.
abstract: The potential of newly introduced medications to cause acute inflammatory skin diseases has long been recognized. Less well accepted and not often systematically studied is the role of long-term drug use in inflammatory skin diseases such as eczema. Hypothesis-driven case-control studies provide what is probably the most efficient but far from easy method to evaluate and quantify observations from case reports and case series that suggest a drug etiology for chronic skin diseases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. rstern@bidmc.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Robert S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Stern
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003880:Dermatology / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D004485:Eczema / Q000188:drug therapy*; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation / Q000188:drug therapy*; D016017:Odds Ratio; D012107:Research Design; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012871:Skin Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000276:immunology*; D013997:Time Factors