This is really frustrating :(

I'm 20 years old female and I'm skinny, but I have these darker spots on my body.  Like my underarms and inner thighs, (also my knees and elbow).  I also have sensitive skin and skin allergies.  My genital once hurt and  I had so much trouble peeing because it hurt a lot.  But then after two weeks, it disappeared.  My underarms and inner thighs (and butt part) gets itchy sometimes.  I'm thinking maybe I have fungi problems, but I really don't know.  I researched for cures, but I don't know who to trust/products I can trust.  And then I found this site and maybe I could ask a real doctor online, because I'm not comfortable talking to our family doctor about this stuff.  Hope someone here can help me.  I would really appreciate it.

[Bhupinder Kaur, MD]

Hello,
The symptoms that you are having can be due to erythrasma or fungal infections. Difficulty in micturtion is unrelated to it and is caused by urinary tract infection. Erythrasma is a chronic superficial infection of the groins and underarms. The typical appearance is well-demarcated, brown-red macular patches. The skin has a wrinkled appearance with fine scales.

It has to be differentiated from contact dermatitis, psoriasis, sweat dermatitis and fungal infections which may mimic it. Wood lamp examination and gram staining are the tests for its diagnosis.

The standard therapy of erythrasma is antibiotics and antifungals because it is caused by a bacteria C minutissimum. Erythromycin is the drug of choice.

Mild steroids are helpful in reducing the inflammation associated with it. But use it only after a dermatologist’s prescription. So please get an evaluation done from a dermatologist first.

Hope it helps. Take care and please do keep me posted on how you are doing or if you have any additional queries. Kind regards.