Grim discovery in son's armpit sparks Aussie mum's warning
The baby's nasty rash was rapidly spreading before a solution was found.
An Aussie mum is warning parents of the danger of soaring temperatures after her 10-week-old son developed a serious rash over his body. In a photo of the baby's armpit, a giant red mark can be seen, prompting healthcare professionals to urge all parents to take action if they spot a similar rash.
"It first appeared in the creases as just a red line," Daina Hilan told Yahoo News Australia, sharing a photo of her baby Tevita's leg with a red mark in the fold of his skin. "Sometimes it goes away but in cases like my son's it didn’t go away and it got much worse within a 48-hour period. But it does always get much worse before it gets better, like most things."
Daina, who also has two young daughters, went on to say that the recent spike in temperatures on the NSW Central Coast didn't help. "After that almost 40-degree day we had the other day, behind his ears were much worse," she explained. "That's where it first started and then obviously the hotter the whole body gets, the wetter the areas stay, so unfortunately my son got it under both arms and behind both ears."
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Daina said she'd tried keeping her son's clothes off, cleaning his skin and drying it out, while using cream, breast milk and saline water to treat the rash. But it wasn't until she started to use hydrozole cream — an antifungal product recommended by a local pharmacist — that it began to clear up. Fortunately, the rash has "most definitely gotten better" since she began using hydrozole.
What is the rash?
According to Kieran Le Plastrier, Assistant Professor of General Practice at Bond University, it looks like intertrigo, "which is basically a moisture and fungal overgrowth in the folds of our skin". While it starts out as a redness, it can feel itchy, uncomfortable, burning, prickly and painful, and can become inflamed and breed.
"Hot weather, and particularly humid hot weather, promotes sweating and reduces the body's evaporation of sweat and so it becomes warm and dark in the folds of our skin and you can get fungal overgrowth as a result," Le Plastrier told Yahoo News Australia.
"Going to the pharmacist is usually the best port of call. There are lots of over the counter and pharmacy-only creams that can help."
How to prevent the rash
The key to preventing intertrigo, says Le Plastrier, is to avoid skin folds from "becoming excessively damp for long periods of time". "We can do that by making sure we towel ourselves off with clean dry towels after showers and when we've been out and about sweating a lot," he said.
If an irritation does occur, Le Plastrier recommends using a barrier cream as soon as possible, such as sorbolene or zinc creams, to help reduce the risk of a rash forming.
For babies, the most important thing is to pay attention to what you're dressing them in. "What we know is that natural fabrics such as cotton and linens breathe very well and will allow moisture to escape," Le Plastrier explained. "Whereas children who are perhaps wearing synthetic fabrics tend to have more issues with sweat remaining on the skin and that can be the problem."
"But the key thing is that we need to allow babies and young children's body temperature to be regulated. And the best way to do that is to have them just lightly dressed for bedtime and perhaps have moving air. So fans are really great at allowing the body to evaporate sweat and you get less of these build-up problems."
If parents are ever in doubt about a rash, Le Plastrier said it's important to have it assessed. "I've had situations where parents have waited a period of time, hoping that something would settle down over a few days and it just gets worse," he said. "So when you see red, broken skin like that, it does need to be assessed by a medical professional pretty quickly."
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