of self-perceived sensitive skin across the industrialized world. In fact, most women in the United States, Europe, and Japan believe they have sensitive skin.29
The term sensitive skin was initially introduced by Bernstein in 1947 as one of the factors contributing to soap induced dermatitis30 and further reintroduced and described by Frosch and Kligman31 in the 1970s. Later on, the terms Cosmetic Intolerance Syndrome (CIS),32 Status Cosmeticus, and Sensitive Skin Syndrome (SSS),33 were also introduced in several literatures. In 2017, a group of international experts published a position paper defining sensitive skin as “a syndrome defined by the occurrence of unpleasant sensations (stinging, burning, pain, pruritus, and tingling sensations) in response to stimuli that normally should not provoke such sensations. These unpleasant sensations cannot be explained by lesions attributable to any skin disease. The skin can appear normal or be accompanied by erythema. Sensitive skin can affect all body locations, especially the face”.34 Sensitive skin may occur with people with seemingly normal skin, or as a part of the symptoms associated with underlying dermatological conditions.
Epidemiological Differences in Diverse Populations
Due to the fact that the diagnosis of sensitive skin is mainly based on individuals’ subjective description of the symptoms, most epidemiological studies use questionnaire surveys.35,36 As summarized in Table 1, the first large scale questionnaire survey was conducted in 2001 in the United Kingdom with 2046 out of 3300 women and 260 out of 500 men responding to the sensitive skin questionnaire. Among those respondents, 51.4% women and 38.2% men reported having experienced sensitive skin symptoms.35 In another multinational study comprised
