11 October 2023

Flagellate erythema after eating shiitake mushrooms


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.  

1 comment:

  1. 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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