Ichthyosis

[revenant]

Hello, anybody here with Ichythyosis, a disorder of the skin resulting in thick, cracked and scale-like skin? I have stumbled upon a few medical studies that have linked children with ichthyosis to having celiac disease, and am wondering about the possible connection to this "irreversible" inflammatory skin disease.

[Mdhriggin]

Great question - one I had too. My 4 year old daughter and husband both have celiac, and when my infant son was two months old he started having serious skin issues. The nurse at their daycare suspected ichthyiosis, so I started doing some research. There are a lot of different forms of ichthyiosis, the most common form (according to the pediatric dermitologist we saw) said it was basically really bad atopic dermititis and eczema. One think she and our gastroenterolist said is that the celiac can compromise the person's immune system, so that infections can occur more easily on the skin, mimicking ichthyhiosis (for which there is no confirmatory test and is sometimes used as an, "we've ruled everything else out," diagnosis). That was what was the case for my son - he had a staph, strep, and fungal infection of the skin. Still waiting to see if he has celiac as we are waiting to introduce gluten, but there was at least the genetic link possible in our case.