Atypical Scabies Symptoms

After a recent run-in with the insidious scabies mite, my husband and I realized the need to disseminate more accurate information on scabies symptoms. There are seemingly hundreds, if not thousands, of folks out there in cyberspace searching for an explanation for crawling sensations and itchy bites that appear to arise from an invisible culprit. Perhaps a description of our somewhat atypical scabies presentation will aid others in obtaining a faster, more accurate diagnosis.

Scabies are parasitic mites that infest human skin. They are contracted through contact with an infested person, be it as intimate and prolonged as sexual intercourse or as brief as picking up a child at a daycare facility. The mites are microscopic and cannot therefore be easily seen with the naked eye. However their burrow marks are often visible as curvy, grayish lines on the skin. Rashes or pimple-like bumps resembling bug bites may also be present. Healthcare professionals will look for evidence of scabies between the fingers and toes, across the shoulder blades, in the armpits, along the inner elbows and insides of the wrists, around the breasts, waist, genitals, buttocks and knees, as well as on the soles of the feet. Widespread belief within the healthcare community holds that the scabies mite largely avoids the face and scalp. It is also common belief that these mites are too small to elicit a crawling sensation on the skin, although the body's immune response to the mite, and to the feces and eggs it deposits in its burrow, leads to severe itching.

The above may indeed describe the typical presentation of a scabies infestation. However our personal battle with these mites did not entail much itching at all. In fact, the first odd sensation that both my husband and I felt was a tickle in the nose that simply would not go away, scratch as we may. It persisted for days and then weeks, and finally, an entire year. We also periodically felt an ever-so-slight weight landing on our eyelashes, as though someone had blown a handful of dust in our faces. I had a few bumps on the outer parts of my arm that looked and felt like pinpricks, but my husband had none. We both felt a crawling sensation across our feet and on our legs at various times throughout any given day. The doctors said the symptoms did not resemble scabies and that we should not worry about it. They even suggested the problem might be in our minds when it persisted. Such a suggestion of 'delusional parasitosis' by more than one doctor would seem rather inappropriate given that two individuals with no history of mental illness began experiencing dermatological symptoms within the same week.

In any case, we began taping our skin whenever we felt a crawling sensation in the hopes of finding something under a microscope. It took a long time to find anything because these mites spend most of their time under the skin, but we eventually got lucky. We took a picture of what we found and sent it to a mite expert for identification. The tickling and crawling sensations we felt on our bodies, including our faces, were indeed caused by scabies. A simple Permethrin treatment did the trick after an entire year of suffering, although the treatment drug causes its own immune reaction that sometimes feels as though the parasites are back. We've been told now by others who have had this experience that the immunological reaction eventually goes away, but can take months. In any case, it is not nearly as annoying or worrisome as the original problem, so we are happy.

Given the persistence of this parasite and the lack of knowledge on this subject that seems to be pervasive throughout the healthcare community, one can imagine how we feel when we come across the pleas for help posted online by others with similar symptoms going undiagnosed. My suggestion to anyone experiencing unexplained itching, rashes, bumps, crawling or tickling on any part of the body, including the face, is to at least consider scabies. And if your doctor will not cooperate due to a lack of evidence implicating this culprit, find another doc who has more experience with these and other parasites.

You can read about effective treatments and possible side effects that will leave you guessing as to whether your treatment actually worked at the following associated hub:

How Do You Know If Your Scabies Treatment Worked

Or, if you think you may be dealing with another type of mite infestation, please read the following article:

Mites That Bite Humans: Bird and Rodent Mites