Tinea Versicolor

My daughter just recovered from tinea versicolor after about 3 WEEKS OF THERAPY! As I write this, the lesions are still there although repigmentation has begun. I am positive that in a matter of days, the lesions will disappear.


It all started when i noticed some hypopigmented annular skin lesions on the bridge of her nose with slightly raised borders and non-itchy.
I made a diagnosis of tinea versicolor. 

So, having combed through the books on management, I gave oral itraconazole bd for 5 days first for convenience sake since I read that the topical therapy will need to be applied for about 3 weeks and I wanted to avoid that stress. I had deliberately avoided giving oral ketoconazole since I read again that it has been banned as an over the counter drug and first line therapy due to its predisposition to lead to hepatoxicity in susceptible patients. I remember this by noting that ketoconazole starts with k for kill.

The books say that oral itraconazole therapy given over 5 to 7 days will lead to a cure in over 90% of cases of course evidenced by the abscence of the typical meatball and spaghetti appearance after scraping and using the KOH preparation.....

Well, i was all too willing to "Believe" in the cure and wait for the repigmentation stage to begin after I was through with the oral therapy rather than go through the process of confirming the cure. 5 days later after treatment ,  I was still waiting for the repigmentation to begin and then I became concerned. On consulting the book and online sites yet again, I discovered that it can take weeks for the lesions to disappear... WEEKS!!!

Of course,  despite giving lots of explanations to my family on why we need to wait, they wanted any kind of topical therapy to be instituted not believing that any cure had been achieved, who can blame them... I wasn't even sure myself. And so while researching on the go to topical therapy, I learnt that I can use selenium sulphide, the popular shampoo used for dandruff, topical terbinafine, itraconazole and ketoconazole. I opted for Nizoral( topical ketoconazole) and selenium sulphide.

I was worried dt it might spread to her siblings but that fear was allayed when I read that it wasn't contagious.

So, that was my ordeal with Tinea versicolor, a chronic skin condition, that is non-contagious, not associated with bad hygiene and might take weeks to heal despite obeying instructions.

Almost forgot, a concerned parent proceeded to tell me that it was poor hygiene that led to my child having the lesions and advised me to keep scrubbing at it to elicit a cure. Well, I thanked her and then educated her on what TINEA VERSICOLOR was all about...