Eczema herpeticum – this is a term that I keep hearing of moms in forums sharing that their children have repeated eczema herpeticum during the year and also of delayed diagnosis where it’s not identified as herpeticum promptly.
If you search eczema herpeticum’s definition – you’ll see it’s often stated as a rare life-threatening complications that results from infections caused by herpes simplex virus type 1 or 2. The virus enters the child’s body through the defective skin (common in eczema children) and attacks multiple organs, including eyes, brain, lung and liver. However, judging from moms’ feedback, it isn’t that rare, so let’s learn more about it!
Is Eczema Herpeticum Dangerous?
Before we get to that, let’s look at how one gets it. Usually the child comes into contact or catches the virus from someone with cold sores. Cold sores is not dangerous and usually it causes blisters around the mouth and is accompanied with fever or flu-like symptoms. Cold sores is most contagious when there are blisters, but can also spread when there’s no blister as the herpes simplex virus can lie dormant in one’s body. The virus can be spread by kissing, sharing utensils, lip balm or generally, coming into contact with the mucus of the infected person.
Now, here’s the DANGER part – for a child with eczema, the herpes simplex virus can enter the skin and sets off a chain of infections, including large scale bacterial skin infection. The symptoms are:
1. 5-12 days after exposure – Rashes with blisters at eczema lesions/skin patches
2. Spreading of the blisters with yellow pus, accompanied with flu, fever and body aches
3. Blisters start to get painful with bleeding, scabbing
4. Widespread at body parts, usually neck, head, upper body with swollen lymph nodes
If left to run its course, the infections may take over body organs, including the eyes. Should the eczema on your child looks different than normal, and starts to blister with pus, it’s recommended to go to the hospital for a prompt diagnosis and treatment.
Diagnosing and Treating Eczema Herpeticum
Diagnosis can be quickly conducted by antibody staining of the pus filled vesticles or a viral culture test. Sometimes, it may be mistaken as small pox or chicken pox, but in any case, an anti-viral drug such as acyclovir or valaciclovir can be administered. For skin with bacterial infections caused by staph, antibiotics is also given to reduce the secondary infection risk.
Be prompt in going to hospital as research shows that the delay in one day increases hospital stay by 11% and one-third of the patients have staph infections, while 3.9% has blood infected and 3.8% needs to stay in intensive care.
As for why moms are sharing that their children gets repeated attacks, it’s because the virus stays in the child’s body and sometimes when there’s a trigger such as fever/flu or stress, it can set off the virus. Some children need to be on daily anti-viral drug which so far, seems to be minimal long-term negative effect as the drug attacks the virus but not the child.
Learn more about eczema and infection from National Eczema Society here.
A note on Marcie’s experience: When she got chickenpox, she didn’t get the anti-viral drug because her skin wasn’t so bad. When she got Hand-Foot-Mouth-Disease the second time, she was given anti-bacterial antibiotics because her skin looked red and infected.