I hope someone can help me out; I've been struggling with this for four years and it has taken a major turn for the worse in the past 2 months.
My symptoms are an extremely uncomfortable, painful, itchy, burning feeling at the corners of my mouth. The only visible symptom are the tiniest little bumps, and sometimes I don't even see those at all while I am feeling the pain---in other words, it feels much worse than it ever looks. In recent weeks the itching spread to the line between the corners of my nose and the corners of my mouth (closer to the mouth), and a tiny pink bump or two is visible there. The bumps will disappear when I'm in a lull and then reappear in the exact same location. The sensation is generally much worse in the evening (soon after I get home from work) and persists through bedtime; it is often MUCH better or gone in the morning and reappears around 6:00 p.m. The only thing that has consistently helped me is Benadryl in pill form. It calms the horrible sensation for a little while. I'm taking loads and loads of Benadryl these days and would love to treat the underlying cause.
Also, twice in the four years---including the onset of the problem---the rash did explode into a very visible, oozing, horrible mess around the corners of my mouth. The first episode was diagnosed as having been caused by mango skin, and was treated with some harsh things (including fluocinonide) which I now know probably shouldn't have been used on the face. I wonder if this caused all my problems, or if the initial rash was just the beginning of a chronic problem. The second outbreak, about a year ago, had no known food cause but it happened while I was on vacation, so I might have eaten something unusual. No mangos, though. I didn't treat it with anything and the oozy rash went away after about 5 miserable days, and the chronic problem described above continues.
Recently, I entered a phase of applying more and more lip balm to try to quell the problem, but eventually noticed that the sensations got worse after application (including the itching up above my mouth, where no balm was applied). That's when I started to worry about a contact dermatitis from all the lip balm.
In general, ANY new treatment I try (e.g. aquaphor or other balms) seems to help for a week, then the symptoms return as bad or worse than ever.
I have seen a dermatologist and he diagnosed angular cheilitis and prescribed ketoconazole cream and desonide ointment. Like any other treatment I've tried, symptoms improved for about a week then returned to normal. I do see this doctor for a followup but I wanted to get other opinions.
Please HELP! This is ruining my life, my relationship, everything.