A touching allergy, an encounter of an unusual kind (an encounter of a third kind, according to some classifications), made its way into a medical journal report:
“Contact allergy to a meteorite: An interesting consequence of nickel allergy,” L. Malinauskiene, Contact Dermatitis, epub 2018. The author, at Vilnius University, Lithuania, reports:
“A 28-year-old male patient presented to our clinic with a 6-week history of erythematous and itchy plaques on the inner side of the fifth finger of the right hand (Figure 1). This side of the finger was in contact with a wedding ring made from white gold and encrusted with meteorites, which had been bought from a specialized boutique. Moreover, dermatitis on the abdominal skin under a belt buckle was reported…. One [other] case of allergic contact dermatitis caused by a ring in a patient allergic to nickel has been published so far. In conclusion, it is interesting to remember that some allergens found on Earth can have dropped from outer space.”
An appreciation/analysis of the study appears in the Réalités Biomédicales blog.