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Rash of itching spreads through schools in seven states

No one is really sure why kids are scratching from an affliction that seems to disappear almost as fast as it appears.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. March 11, 2002.

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Norman Sykes, MD, the only dermatologist in the Quakertown, Pa., area, heard about the outbreak in early February.

A few days before, more than 50 children at a local school had developed a rash. It presented within a two-hour period and the students were bused to the emergency department of St. Luke's Quakertown Hospital. They showered, dressed in scrubs, and turned over to health officials their clothing, which was then placed in plastic bags and taken away.

Before much else could happen, the rash vanished.

In more than half of the cases here, the rash disappeared before the students even saw a physician.

But over the next two weeks, the rash reappeared daily -- finding new victims as well as returning to previous targets. By the middle of February, it had touched nearly 170 people in this locality and eventually turned up in the next county.

And then it was gone.

"The itch," as it is being called around the country, had come to Quakertown.

Since September 2001, a mystery rash has afflicted children in seven states without warning -- turning cheeks, arms and bellies bright red and itchy. It often strikes in the school setting, disappearing after the child goes elsewhere. It infiltrates large groups at once, and then slowly peters out. And only rarely does it appear on teachers or relatives of the school-aged victims.

"This was unprecedented," said Dr. Sykes, assistant professor of dermatology with the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, who has met with nearly all those affected in a hunt for the cause. "I'd never seen anything like it." [...]