Hooked On Your Skin - Useful Scabies Facts
Elizabeth Campbell
Scabies are usually transmitted through direct contact, intimate, for example sleeping in the same bed with the infected individual. The affection is a type of dermatitis, meaning skin affection, which is highly contagious. It is caused by itch mite and it is characterized by an eruption.
The mites cannot fly or jump but just crawl very slowly. They can live for four days outside of their human host. They can reach humans through clothes, linens and other personal items that have been used by an infested person.
The itch mite that causes the scabies is called Sarcoptes scabiei. This type of mites is attracted by the heat and the smell of the human body. Female mites go into the skin, literally digging small tunnels, the size of very small threads, which sometimes are visible. That is the place where the parasites lay their eggs.
It is transmitted by close contact and direct touch of an infected individual or by touching items, which were contaminated by an infected person, such as a doorknob, or a cup, or if you touch the clothes previously worn by a contaminated person.
The mite can penetrate the skin with ease, particularly in rough wrinkled areas of the skin, such as the knees, elbows, and between fingers.
After going under the skin, a female mite can lay up to twenty eggs before it dies. Those eggs laid under the skin will transform into larva three days later. The larva moves on the surface of the skin and they become adults after fourteen to seventeen days later. The whole cycle continues until the itchy mites are destroyed.
The itch mites will only infect humans and not our animal pets, and vice versa. The animal mites will stay on the animals since they cannot exist and reproduce on the human body.
Still, they can live long enough on human skin to cause itches, allergies, or produce papules in a few days. As we mentioned before, scabies are very contagious. Parasites can be transmitted to healthy people even after the infected ones have no more symptoms, if they are not treated properly. After the first contamination takes place, several weeks must pass so that the symptoms are back on the skin.
During this time, the patient is highly contagious because of the incubation period. Symptoms of the infectation become more prominent after taking a bath at night. At times, they can be mistaken for dry skin as it looks like dry skin.
The itching sensation is caused by the allergic reaction to the mite. For children and for older people who are infected, the itchy might become severe.
The skin will produce a rash with small curves due to the tunnels burrowed by the mites under the skin. At times, you could see a black dot at the end of the burrow, and that would be the mite itself. Perhaps, you can pick it up with something and put it under a microscope, and then you could see your tormentor face to face.
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