talkhealth forums

Hello,
My son has been dealing with eczema since he was six months old. He is now almost 8. His itchy skin was diagnosed as eczema and he was prescribed hydro-cortisone cream and Atarax as needed. He normally had eczema on the front side of his upper legs. But recently his eczema expanded beyond our control. His eczema does not look like regular eczema pictures that I see when I do an online search. Therefore I thought about the possibility of allergy. The specialist we were sent to did not do a food allergy test, claiming that they may give false positive. She did do an environmental allergy test and the result was negative. We are kind of hopeless and I kind of feel that this may be a simple allergic reaction to certain foods rather than eczema. I will ask for food allergy test again in our follow-up visit.
My son itches himself a lot until he bleeds, and I do not want to give him atarax every night. His pajamas always have blood stains from his itch. He looks miserable and we can't do anything that solves the problem.
Please respond if your child has similar eczema patterns that you see in the attached picture.

Thanks.

Hi

So sorry to hear that the eczema is worsening.. I don't know if it's food allergy, or if food allergy triggered eczema will look different from other triggered- eczema; I do suggest a skin prick test with the basic food groups, and I understand that for older children, house dust mite is the more common trigger. No allergy test is fool-proof but I don't think that's a reason to not test it..

Take care dear,
Mei

I am now thinking that this could be scabies. But no one else in the family has it. Any idea?

How is your son now? Has he had any further tests?

Sorry to hear about your son's misery! I might be a bit late in responding to this - if it were scabies odds are, others in the household would have been infected by now as it's quite contagious but can take up to a month and a half to appear. You can usually see the burrows of the mites but you usually need a doctor to confirm that it is scabies.

I do recall my son having similar spots (sorry, the photo's a bit blurry so it may not be exactly the same) during different phases of his eczema. He has atopic dermatitis (there are lots of different types of eczema) as well as independent allergies (food and environmental).

About the time his skin became lichenified (thickened) and scaly, he would itch at particular spots which would become infected and filled with pus or open up a wound. He would have several of these over his legs.

For the plan we had, we continued with frequent moisturizer, used 'wetwraps' and topical steroid cream or antibiotic cream. As soon as he reduced the scratching (from having the wraps on and by scratching around not over the wounds) they usually cleared up in a couple of days.

The allergy test situation sounds stressful. Our son had skin prick and RAST tests done before he was a year old and was allergic to several things and we decided to follow an avoidance diet for him. I'm not sure what the false positive scenario means - the tests are easily accessible here either privately or publicly.

Best of luck - I hope your son finds some relief.

Hi!

False positive in allergy testing means that the certain allergen (food/dust mite/environment) are tested to be positive, i.e. trigger the eczema flare-up. However, it is false.. ie doesn't trigger (in real life) but only showed as trigger in the test.

If your child is tested to be positive to many things, may consider repeating the test 6 months later (as the immune changes for a child) and see if there are (hopefully) less positives.

Take care,
Mei