Splotchy skin?

[m3creasy]

Hello - Hope everyone is enjoyng the last few weeks of summer before school starts back. I have a question and you may have some insight. Hunter has developed very pronounced splotchy skin around his nose and mouth this summer. He has been in the sun a lot although we apply sun screen several times a day and in the chlorinated pool. When I say splothcy, I mean he has patches of significantly lighter skin on his face. He has had some overexposure on his nose and face but there hasn't been any visible peeling. My daughter from China has never had this type of thing so I am not sure if children from Asian are particularly susceptible. We have friends with a son from Inner Mongolia who has also developed the same thing and his family was told it was eczema but Hunter doesn't really have patches of scaly skin on his face. It doesn't seem to bother him at all and I don't want to make him self concious about it by dragging him to the doctor if this is simply a matter of new skin generating where old skin got too much sun but I'm just not sure. Any ideas? Any recommendations for strong, non-perfumy facial sunscreen that kids would like? Thanks!
Mary Li

[asian~treasures]

Is it itchy? Adria gets something similar on her arms...by her elbows, but it's itchy. It isn't dry, but sometimes has little blisters. Our Dr. said it isn't eczema, either. The day we were in for her check-up, our Dr. had a medical student shadowing him. The med student was from Vietnam. We asked her about it & she said Vnese kids she cared for in VN (she was a physician there & has to take more classes here to be licensed in the US) get that when it's really hot or if they're not getting their skin clean.

[m3creasy]

Thanks Sheri. No, Hunter's patches aren't itchy. Maybe its a reaction to having sunscreen on his face all day. I'll keep you posted.

[Gina]

Hi Mary Li,

Our daughter was diagnosed with mild Pityriasis Alba. She has a few light spots on her cheeks near her nose. It is not itchy. It is more prominent in the summer. We use a medicated lotion prescribed by the doctor when it flares up. Hope this helps!

http://www.skinsight.com/child/pityriasisAlba.htm

Gina
mom to Sofia (8) and Zachary (almost 3), Danang

[ten2love]

This doesn't address Mary Li's question, but Sheri, it sounds as though Adria gets what Kiet does and what landed him in the hospital with a bacterial infection from scratching. I (and my pediatrician concurs) believe it is acropustulosis. Here is what one adoptive mom who is also an MD wrote on the APV list:

<<I am an adoptive parent of 2 awesome little boys from Vietnam, one of whom has had continual outbreaks from a disease called acropustulosis. I am also a medical doctor, doing research in dermatology, and believe that this disease entity is LARGELY under-diagnosed in internationally adopted kids. My belief is that, while considered "rare," it is actually quite prevalent in the population of internationally adopted pediatric patients.

It often occurs after a scabies infection, and usually manifests as recurrent pustular (blister) outbreaks around the hands and feet in kids under 3 who were previously infested with scabies. These blisters ITCH, crop up in groups, then resolve, and a few weeks or months later, new ones appear just like the previous batch.

I know many AP's have bounced from doctor to doctor trying to get a diagnosis and find an effective treatment for their child's pustular outbreaks. Many of your kids have been treated repeatedly and unnecessarily for scabies infections or other unrelated dermatologic diseases such as hand-foot-mouth, when what they really have could be acropustulosis. While acropustulosis has been written about in dermatology literature, there isn't much that's understood about it and no one has any idea of the incidence. My interest is in highlighting, again, the connection between scabies and acropustulosis and investigating the incidence of acropustulosis in children who had previous scabies infections. Specifically, I am interested in drawing attention to this disease in internationally adopted kids so that it is recognized by pediatricians, family docs, and dermatologists as a common complication of scabies that occurs relatively frequently in immigrant children.>>

Right now Kiet is suffering horribly from it as hot, humid weather really makes it act up. Just thought I'd pass it along because so few US MD's know about it and it may save you from having to be in an isolation ward in the hospital someday while different doctors from different departments dither about what is causing it and then prescribe very potent anti-scabies pills for your entire family.

[asian~treasures]

Elizabeth,
Thanks for the info!!

[staceyn'corey]

Great info everyone. I'll keep an eye out for this kind of thing. It does seem like Autumn has very sensitive skin and gets little rashes or bumps from time to time that resolve on there own. She had scabies quite a lot at the orphanage.

[VN2MO]

You know what, Sophie developed one on her left check about the size of a penny this summer too. We were not overly concerned about it and the doctor said it is something they see in Asian children. We treated it with ointment and it is slowly vanishing away to her normal skin tone.

[gretchenfaith]

Lana gets patches on her face that are lighter than the rest of her skin. I thought it had something to do with sunscreen (she is in our pool all summer long, so, even with sunscreen, the rest of her skin gets very dark.)

I took her to a dermatologist who specializes in "ethnic skin issues" who basically made me feel about 2 feet tall and read me the riot act for using "inferior skin products" on my daughter. (The lotion I was using was from St. Ives - it's SWISS!!)

She told me I needed to use Eucerin (at a minimum) and prescribed some crazy expensive lotion for Lana's face.

Well...

The Eucerin is making her skin nice and soft, I will admit. However, the crazy expensive presciption lotion did NOTHING for Lana's face.

One night it was looking especially bad (even worse than before the prescription lotion.) I had a jar of Bag Balm in the bathroom, which we use when our hands gets chapped. (Yes, it's for cows. But people use it all the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_Balm) - Anyway, it's working to clear up the spots on Lana's face. I don't know why. Within a few days it was looking back to normal. (Lana hates the smell and keeps hiding the jar, though.)

I kind of want to go back to the doctor who made me feel so bad about the St. Ive's lotion and tell her that a veterinary lotion was fixing the problem. But I figured she would yell at me again...

[NTT]

Sheri,

Our boys had problems last summer with itchy blistery skin areas that flared up at times. My pediatrician advised to calm any flare ups with California Baby calendula cream mixed with a drop or two of tea tree oil, and it indeed helped a lot. The real success though came after we had the boys tested for parasites and digestion issues and found and treated giardia. Since then, no more skin issues.

Eva