Daily Urticarial Patches in a Young Boy

A little boy aged 3 1/2 was brought by his parents. He was distressed with a problem of large urticarial patches, coming up almost every morning for the last  eight months. The rashes appear on his forehead first and then spread to various parts of his body. They are about 3-4 inches in diameter, red, elevated itchy and painful. He gets atleast 4-5 patches through the day, and they stay for another 2-3 days. When they start fading off, new ones have come up and the fading ones leave dark discoloured blotches.

The child is very cranky, and irritated since this started. He also has mild fever with the rashes. His appetite has gone poor and he even does not want milk, which he had been fond of.  He has not been gaining weight since then, and the whole situation has caused a great concern and alarm to his parents.

The child had no major problems till July 2018, when he developed high fever which was treated with antibiotics. After that he developed rashes on his forehead which started spreading over his body. Allopathy did not help. He again developed fever after 15 days, and the rashes continued to come. The skin specialist diagnosed it as Tuberous urticaria. The parents were not keen on giving anti-allergics as they knew it would only suppress the problem and also for the possible side-effects.

Homeopathy was started and the local Homeopath gave him Anacardium which helped for a while, then they were back like on day one.

His CRP is high. He has had 3 episodes of fever in 2 months.

He was then given Copaiva 1 M by the local Homeopath, daily one dose. If the dose was missed, then many more lesions erupted. The repertory mentions Urticaria- Chronic-Children- Copaiva (single Remedy). But inspite of this treatment continuing for months, the problem had not subsided at all!

The child has to be forced to eat. He will go hungry till 2.30 pm. Never asks for water. Sleeps well, pleasant on waking. He is an energetic child. Very active. Bites and scratches if he is teased. Sweats on sleeping.

When I restudied his case, his parents mentioned that the fever in July was the first he had that was quite severe and needed antibiotics. And not only that, it relapsed 3 times in 2 months, and he was given antibiotics each time by the paediatrician.

So we have:

A/ F antibiotics

Active child

< morning on waking

Forehead

Urticaria with fever

In this repertorisation Rhus Tox is the most prominent, belonging to the family Anacardiaceae. So we see that Anacardium partially relieved initially as it also belonged to the Anacardiaceae family. But when you see ailments from antibiotics- Rhus Venenata is the only remedy coming up.  RhusVenenata 30 was given to the child, and lo and behold,the rashes reduced to the size of a mosquito bite in 2 weeks and disappeared in a month.