Ever wonder if a stranger's skin condition is contagious? Let's say you are sitting on the bus, or you're crammed into a busy subway, and a lady with a big red spotted rash plops down next to you.
When should you start worrying and ditch the seat? Contagious skin disorders are maladies in which the host, or carrier of the skin disorder, passes it on to another person.
Some of these conditions are worrisome, and some are simply chronic skin conditions that are not communicable.
Some conditions are caused by bacterial or fungal infections, while others are simply allergic or autoimmune reactions.
A small simple and commonly seen contagious skin disorder is a wart.
The technical name for a common wart is Verruca vulgaris.
When I was a kid, they always told me that frog urine caused warts.
It could be an urban legend but I was convinced that it was the curse of the from until at least high school! The fact is, warts are caused by a simple virus that makes the growth of skin cells go haywire.
Warts are communicable.
Shingles, or adult chicken pox is a highly contagious skin disorder.
Also known as herpes zoster, this skin condition is characterized by an intense prodrome of deep unexplained pain that follows the route of a nerve pathway.
The pain is followed by a unilateral eruption of a red rash along the nerve route with crops of liquid filled blisters or vesicles.
Each of the vesicles contains liquid that has live herpes virus inside, which is of course auto-inoculating or contagious.
School age children will often contract pink-eye, otherwise known as acute bacterial conjunctivitis.
The aggressive nature of this disease is probably due to the way its spread through poor hygiene of children, runny noses, lack of hand washing, and the habit of touching each other during play.
This is a highly virulent and communicable condition, but an easily remedied bacterial infection of the outer eyeball.
The bacterial love to set up home in the soupy tears of the carrier, and causes pus like discharge and conjunctival injection or redness.
Usually some antibiotic drops will cure the patient.
Impetigo is also commonly seen in the classroom and is characterized by crops of "honey crusted lesions on a erythematous base.
" That's tech talk for dried fluid that has turned into amber colored crystals on a red tender patch of raw skin.
This is cause by a simple staph infection and easily treated with antibiotics.
Yes, it's contagious too.
So what do you do when a pretty girl goes to give you a kiss on the lips and she has a huge cold sore staring you in the face? Herpes Simplex is a common virus that gives a person cold sores, and it is the same virus responsible for genital herpes.
When the body becomes stressed, viruses that usually remain dormant and well controlled by your immune system, get out of control.
There is no cure for this virus, but outbreaks can be controlled with medications and lifestyle.
Things like cold, heat, sickness are all sources of stress that can cause a communicable herpes outbreak.
Hives, otherwise known as urticaria, is harmless and noncontagious.
Hives can be recognized as large patchy geographic lesions that are pink and itchy.
They don't have blisters or pustules and can appear anywhere on the body and spontaneously resolve.
MRSA is perhaps one of the prophecies of the antibiotic resistance that has actually come home to roost.
They appear as, and are ofter mistaken for, spider bites or insect bites.
MRSA is a resistant strain of staph, and there are only a few antibiotics that are useful against it.
MRSA is highly infectious spread through direct contact with ones' skin.