Adults with excessively dry hands were four times more likely than healthy counterparts to fail computerized fingerprint verification tests in a small new study from Malaysia.

"Because of the emerging use of biometrics in daily living, I think hand dermatitis is an upcoming problem," said lead author Dr. Lee Chew Kek, a dermatologist at UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur. "This can have effects on the economy, jobs and security."

Fingerprints are still the most common unique personal trait used to identify an individual. Other measurable unique biological features include the iris of the eye and even keyboard typing patterns. Analysts have projected that the global biometrics market will be worth $16 billion in four years.

Cracked or swollen skin can disrupt the unique crevice pattern found within individuals' thumbprints, which are increasingly used for security checks at banks or to access buildings.

According to an earlier study from Denmark, an estimated 15 percent of people worldwide will suffer from hand dermatitis - skin inflammation usually caused by an allergic reaction.

Lee told Reuters Health she provides hospital verification for patients who cannot have biometric data encoded into a computer chip on their Malaysian national identity card, called MyKad, because of unreadable fingerprints.

To the authors' knowledge, no previous study has investigated how often dermatitis patients fail fingerprint tests.

The research team recruited 100 patients with dermatitis affecting either thumb and 100 participants with healthy fingers as a comparison group. All participants possessed readable MyKad cards.

Each patient had three attempts with each thumb to get an accurate match with a fingerprint scanner that processed the images and linked them to MyKad data.

Twenty-seven of the 100 dermatitis patients failed fingerprint verification tests compared to only two participants in the comparison group.

Eighty-four in the patient group had areas on their thumbs where prints were missing or skin appeared mottled due to rough skin. The larger the area of so-called dystrophy, the more likely a patient was to fail the test.

Abnormal white lines in the prints caused by wrinkles or cuts were found in both groups. However, when white lines appeared in prints, dermatitis patients had a greater number of them. Researchers guessed that the cuts may ruin the pattern of tiny ridges within thumbprints.

Despite the limited size of the study, published in the Archives of Dermatology, the subject is important for dermatologists to be aware of, said Dr. Pieter-Jan Coenraads of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

"Human biology is a lot more variable than security authorities would like to believe, I think," said Coenraads, who was not involved with the study.