Some Irritable Skin Problems
Chicken Pox: This skin disease is characterized with extremely uncomfortable rashes that are effects of the “varicella virus”.
However, since the “chicken pox vaccine” was developed the occurrence of this disease in United States has decreased substantially in compared to what was there twenty years back.
The rash caused by chicken pox has the shape of a “dew drop” on the petal of a rose. This chicken pox disease leaves extremely bad spots all over the body. The spots are so distinct that they look like holes in the skin.
Women with chicken pox during pregnancy should be treated with special care and medications. Even an immunized or a vaccinated person after getting exposed to the chicken pox virus carries the risk of developing another skin disease in their later life –“shingles”.
Shingles: This disease is a tender rash. Shingles is caused completely due to the reactivation of the “varicella virus” –exactly the same virus that is responsible for chicken pox.
The preliminary signs of developing shingles are burning sensation, itching, or soreness. These symptoms occur on a particular area of one’s body, and form a band-like area that is clinically known as a “dermatome”.
The most familiar complication caused by shingles is a severe pain in a patient’s skin once the rash is gone. Fortunately, for us there are however medications and clinical procedures to take care of patients with shingles and there is as well a vaccine to check shingles from happening.
Poison Ivy: This disease is also clinically known by the name of “rhus dermatitis”. This type of skin disease occurs when the patient gets exposed to certain type of plants such as oak, poison ivy, and sumac.
This infamous rash would ideally start with formation of redness and blisters on those areas of the skin that have been exposed to the above mentioned plants. The blisters secrete a fluid. Now, the rash starts to spread to all other skin areas of the patient that gets contacted by the blister fluid.
Poison Ivy and all such “contact dermatitis” causing irritation are medically treated with relevant steroids.
