What is eczema?

What is eczema?

Eczema is one of the most common group of diseases that affect the skin. It's a disease. Eczema comes from the greek word "Ezceo", which means "I bubble over", and that refers to the type of ezcema where you get little red blisters and itching, intense itching, that feels as if the skin is bubbling and burning. The most common type of ezcema is the inherited type of ezcema, that can affect a high percentage of the childhood population; probably up to 10 percent of children, have what we call infantile or "atopic ezcema". It can be associated within families with ezcema, with asthma, with hay fever. That group of diseases is genetically known as "atopic diseases". So eczema, the common form of ezcema is one of those. The good news is that 80 to 90 percent of children that start with ezcema when they are in their one, two, three, four, five , six year old range; will find their ezcema clears or goes into remission before they get into their teenage years. So many times as a dermatologist, I find myself treating the parents rather than the child, because the parents start feeling guilty about their child having ezcema, and they mustn't. That's something they mustn't overfocus on, because it can give the child a problem. That type of ezcema is the most common ezcema. The next most common ezcema is contact or irritant ezcema, where it's caused by allergy or irritancy from makeups, ingredients, and some plants. For example, primulus is a classic example where you can get external causes triggering eczema. Many people are allergic to things like nickel. Some people are allergic to antibiotics in creams like neomycin, and these can give allergic reactions. All of these can give allergic types of ezcema. And then there is another range of ezcema that are ezcema that occurs in older people, often related to dry skin, often very itchy, worse in the winter months. If you look carefully, you'll often find a history of eczema earlier on in life. But those are the main types of ezcema. There are rarer types, but those are the main types.