American woman loses toenails after pedicure with fish
'05.07.2018'
Source: CNN
The 20-year-old New Yorker began to peel off her toenails. Turning to a dermatologist, the woman learned that the popular pedicure procedure with fish, also called fish pedicure or fish peeling, became the cause of her trouble.
Six months before the first signs appeared, the young woman underwent the procedure, dropping her legs into a container filled with water, in which tiny garra-rufa fish were swimming. These little creatures love to feast on horny pieces of skin of the feet, thereby providing the desired effect, writes CNN. Some time after the fish pedicure, the woman noticed that the nails on her legs stopped growing and began to literally fall off. Doctors called this condition onychomadesis.
There can be several reasons for the development of onychomadesis: both autoimmune disorders and hereditary factors or side effects - for example, drugs. But the doctors did not find anything like this in the patient. By exclusion, the fish pedicure was found guilty of the incident.
“I think this is happening more often than it seems,” says Dr. Sheri Lipner, a dermatologist, assistant professor at Columbia University and an expert in nail health. "Manifestations occur months after the procedure, so few people can link one with the other."
Why exactly the problem arose, it is not exactly clear, doctors assume that predatory fish injured the roots of the nail plates, which led to sad results. According to Lipner, this is the first documented case of onychomadesis due to exposure to fish.
Not all colleagues agree with Lipner. Antonella Tosti, a dermatologist from the University of Miami, is not sure about the relationship between fish pedicure and the disease that the patient faced. Tosti, the former president of the European nail community, is inclined to think that onihomadeism was caused by a much more prosaic reason: a certain type of shoe that is not suitable for this woman’s legs.
“It is not uncommon for women with a Greek foot (the shape of the foot, the second toes of which are equal to or longer than the thumbs), if they wear high heels or shoes with pointed toes,” says the expert.
As Lipner noted, toenails usually grow at a speed of about a millimeter per month. The patient's nails will grow back, but it may take a year and a half to complete their renewal.
Lipner reported that she does not know about such cases in her practice and official documents related to visiting salons offering fish pedicure services, but believes that the popularity of such places is related to the unfounded myth about their health benefits. However, the expert added that infections after fish pedicure are periodically recorded.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fish pedicure salons often mistakenly use other types of fish that “have teeth and are capable of sucking blood,” mistaken for garra rufa. How the infection spreads is still unclear - perhaps the fact is that the salons use the same fish that feed on the skin of different people, and the baths cannot be properly cleaned between procedures. It is obvious that some patients may be infected with infections.
The use of fish for a pedicure has been banned in at least 10 US states.
It is also false that Garra Rufa is used to treat psoriasis. “I would be very surprised if you could find a dermatologist who can recommend a fish pedicure for skin and nail treatments. We can say this very confidently, ”emphasized Dr. Lipner.
