Baby girl’s skin burns and tears off after she becomes addicted to eczema steroid cream
Indica suffered eczema and was prescribed topical steroid creams, but soon her skin became dependent
COVERED in red raw patches of skin, little Indica lives in agony.
Her skin burns, tears off and scabs over after she became dependent on a cream to treat her eczema.
The eight-month old was prescribed four different steroid creams before mum Natasha Das Gupta stopped the treatment altogether.
She believes the intensity of the drugs have left her daughter addicted to steroids.
The 27-year-old said her baby girl is suffering topical steroid withdrawal, which can happen after stopping strong or long-term use of the medication.
Natasha stopped using the treatment in March, and since then Indica's has endured nasty flare ups.
The mum-of-two said she rarely sleeps, due to her daughter's piercing screams.
She said: "It was more gruesome than anything I had seen before, and worse than her eczema had ever been.
"She had no skin on her cheeks.
"It was red, wet and raw. Her skin was peeling off, it was terrifying."
"She would scream like her skin was on fire all day and all night.
"It was like her skin was melting off and there was nothing I could do about it. It was horrible."
Indica was prescribed topical steroid creams in February, to treat the eczema that covered her entire body.
Within hours Natasha could see her daughter's skin clearing up.
A painful skin condition that leaves the skin raw, cracked and bleeding
Red Skin Syndrome, also known as Topical Steroid Addiction or Topical Steroid Withdrawal, is a condition that can arise from the use of topical steroids to treat a skin problem, such as eczema.
RSS can also arise from topical steroid use in individuals with no prior skin condition; such as with cosmetic use for skin bleaching or to treat acne, or in the case of caregivers who neglect to wash their hands after applying topical steroids on someone else.
RSS is characterised by red, itchy, burning skin that can appear after ceasing topical steroid treatments, or even between treatments.
Symptoms:
These can fall into two categories - those that appear while using creams and those that appear when not.
- Rebound redness between applications
- Rashes spreading and developing in new areas of the body
- Intense itching, burning, stinging
- Failure to clear with usual course of treatment, requiring a higher potency topical steroid to achieve progressively less clearing.
- Increased allergic response
Treatment:
In order to treat the condition, the use of steroid creams must be stopped.
The condition resolves over time, but no medications or methods of treatment have been proven to speed up the healing process.
Source: Itsan - the red skin syndrome support group
But later it would get much worse.
"I used less than the recommended amount as I knew it was no good for her," Natasha, from Mississauga, Ontario in Canada, said.
"Her skin would get better over short bursts of time, it cleared up and then came back.
"You could see the significant difference in three to four hours, it acted so quickly because she was so small."
But overnight, Indica's condition would revert back, the last time coming back worse than before.
Natasha decided to ditch the cream after using it for just a month, but a day later her daughter's skin flare-up was the worse she'd seen.
She's since suffered flare ups lasting six, five and three-and-a-half weeks, leaving some strangers to ask Natasha if her daughter is a burns victim.
"I knew her body was having a negative reaction to the steroid creams, but I didn't know it had a name," she said.
"It was totally defeating, because I knew it was out of my hands. It was a helpless feeling doing nothing."
MORE ON ECZEMA
Natasha has been warned it could take up to a year for Indica's skin to recover fully, but thankfully her symptoms are starting to ease.
The 27-year-old said: "On bad days life is like a prison and truly hell, but she has better days too.
"It's insanely scary what these things can do and that you don't know what's going to happen.
"It's pretty devastating as there are a lot of holistic ways to permanently cure eczema through environment and diet control.
"I don't think she will remember it. This is the devil incarnate if ever I've seen it."
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