Vitamin C, (ascorbic acid), is a water-soluble, highly labile compound,
easily lost during food processing. It is one of the most common and essential vitamins,
involved in numerous metabolic pathways in the human body and has a protective and
preventive role against the damages of free radicals. Vitamin C deficiency is
responsible for the onset of scurvy. Ascorbic acid has a high tolerability, due to its
short half-life and rarely induces hypersensitivity reactions. Because of its antioxidant
properties, ascorbate salts and other ascorbic acid derivatives are largely used as food
preservatives in industrial beverages or more recently like whitening agents in
cosmetics, thus the first case reports involving products like 3-O-ethyl-L-ascorbic acid
or ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate, have been described in the literature. Such allergic
contact dermatitis seems to be caused by the side chains of these compounds rather
than the ascorbic acid core structure.
Keywords: Allergic Contact Dermatitis, Anaphylaxis, Ascorbates, Ascorbic
Acid, Ascorbyl Tetraisopalmitate, 3-O-ethyl-L-ascorbic Acid, Delayed type
Reaction, Immediate-type Reaction, Scurvy, Urticaria, Vitamin C.
