This week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine offered this example of "shiitake dermatitis" on the back of a 72-year-old man. The condition can occur after eating raw or undercooked shiitake mushrooms (there are a few other possible etiologies of patterns like this, discussed at the link, but the history was diagnostic).
His symptoms were treated with topical steroids and oral antihistamines; the inflammation resolved with some residual hyperpigmentation. The brief case report does not indicate whether some of the erythema was a dermographia from scratching the pruritis.
Fascinating case. I've never seen or heard of anything like this before. You learn something every day.
Yeah, those scratchy red scratches are probably all from scratching. I'm not allergic to mushrooms, but whenever I have an itch, hydrocortisone just makes it worse. Some things help: Itch-X, and when that's not available, dollar-store toothpaste that has baking soda and peroxide in it. When I had shingles in 2001 and it itched so much that it /stung like crazy/, the nurse practitioner told me to soak a soft cloth in dilute vinegar and put that on, but not on bloody places. Also good.
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