Actually, the title of the article was "Allergy sufferers could turn to dentists for relief", but then goes on to tell a story of a survey in Japan correlated warts similar to athlete's foot on the hands and feet of patients who received metal dental fillings.

Apparently, the metals used in the fillings --gold, platinum, palladium, silver, nickel, cobalt, mercury and tin-- induced allergic reactions which were manifested on the patients' skin. Unfortunately, becasue there is little coordination between demartologists and dentists, it took a while to figure out the culprit.

Come to think of it, I've had mercury fillings (removed and replaced with plastic in the meantime), and I doubt it even occured to my dentist to test for allergies. How about you? Did your dentist ask about your allergies, apart maybe regarding allergy to drugs (anitbiotics, anesthetics, etc)?