So, my girlfriend and I are watching this show right now showing this boy in Thailand whose skin looks like it’s covered in dry mud. It’s grey and crackly. Since it’s all in Chinese, my girlfriend’s giving me a synopsis.
Turns out if this kid washes, he stinks. So he just never washes. Does anyone know what this is?
I think she said his skin is very, very dry. If that helps.
Your description sounds a bit like Harlequin Ichthyosis (don’t google that term if you’re even a tiny bit squeamish). It’s usually fatal in infancy, but there are rare cases where people survive into young adulthood with it.
But if adults look anything like a baby with that the OP surely would have mention more then it looks like he’s covered in mud.
There’s trimethylamineuria. or “fish-odor syndrome,” but I’ve never read that washing makes the stink worse. More info:
http://www.medical-library.net/sites/framer.html?/sites/_fish_odor_syndrome.html
Quoted for emphasis. I have to go lie down now.
Wikipedia describes it without pictures. For which I’m glad.
According to the Foundation for Ichthyosis & Related Skin Types (Don’t worry, just illustrations).
The illustration for lamellar ichthyosis,looks like it might be what the OP saw. But, still no mentions of an odor.
I did a google image search of all of the diseases. I peaked through my fingers with one squinted eye in fear. When the pictures came up, each time, I was able to open my eyes, but I didn’t have the stomach to enlarge the pictures. From the thumbnails, I didn’t see anything that resembled this boy.
Looking at the boy (who appeared to be about 12), he had medium/dark gray legions of skin around his neck, hist entire arms and legs. His face was more or less normal. His head and scalp seemed normal as well.
Looking closely at his skin, it looked like when I was a kid and I used to play in the pluff mud in the marsh. When the mud dried it, it was a layer about a quarter of an inch thick and cracked. It was the same color gray as this boys skin.
One thing, that did seemed to resemble the image of the baby in the thumbnails of the Harlequin Ichthyosis, there were red lines. Are those blood vessels? I could faintly see what seemed to be scars on the boys face, which may have been the same as these red lines I saw on the babies body.
That’s all I got though.
Whether you’re describing some type of ichthyosis or another condition where the skin is cracked and appears like it’s “covered in dry mud”, secondary skin infections are common.
The reason for this is at least two-fold: first, essentially any condition with abnormal and/or broken skin allows bacteria to penetrate and take hold. Second, with all the scaling and hyperkeratosis (i.e. excessive proliferation of the outer layer of the skin) some infections will get covered up, trapped really, by the massive scales. In a way, then, it’s like there’s lots of little skin abscesses. When the patient washes an affected area, he/she may wash off an outer layer of scales that had been covering up the infection. When that happens: ODOR (the patient has opened the abscess to the air).
Here’s one article that mentions the problem of odor in people with Lamellar Ichthyosis. Just search for the word ‘odor’ within the text.
This could be it. Scroll down to figure 6
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/xmas98/adwhite/figures.html
Maybe, but, again, any of the ichthyotic conditions can lead to smelly skin infections by the mechanism I mentioned above. Look how it’s described here for Epidermolytic Hyperkeratosis, and then how it’s descibed in the link I posted above regarding Lamellar Ichthyosis. Basically the same.
KarlGauss I agree.
I swear I didn’t see your post, before my last post.
No, they’re raw cracks between hardened plates of skin.