An 11-year-old Australian girl has developed a skin disease that makes her allergic to her tears and sweat.
- Summah Williams, 11, was hospitalized in Brisbane in late 2022 with a painful rash.
- Doctors discovered she had extreme eczema as well as an allergy to her own tears and sweat.
- 850,000 children aged 6 to 11 and 700,000 adolescents suffer from atopic eczema in France.
Summah Williams was a child like any other… full of life and passionate about dance. But at age 11, she developed a skin condition that left her allergic to her own tears and sweat. Which now prevents him from practicing his favorite sport.
Allergy to tears: “the bath was full of skin“
At the end of 2022, the 11-year-old Australian had to be hospitalized because her very dry skin was cracking. The epidermis was also very red and inflamed. At first, his mother Karyn Zimny thought she was suffering from a bad sunburn. But the appearance of other symptoms – like chills and severe nighttime itching – raised concerns.
“When we went to the hospital, she had a staph infection. When she took antibiotics, all the skin on her face and body began to shed like that of a snake from head to toe. The bath was full of skin”, she explained to Australian newspaper 7news.au.
Examinations carried out by doctors revealed that Summah suffered from eczema and had developed a sort of allergy to her own tears and sweat.
Eczema is an inflammation of the skin that causes itching and skin lesions in the form of red patches and sometimes blisters. The most common forms are atopic eczema. (linked to a genetic predisposition) and allergic contact eczema.
Eczema: heat contributes to the increase in incidence in Australia
“Summah is allergic to his own tears. When she cries she gets a rash and gets what we let’s call them panda eyes”explains the mother.
This skin condition, which also occurs with sweat, also forces you to limit physical activity. “[C’est] heartbreakingbecause she likes to dance, confided Karyn Zimny. When she looks at all her other dancing friends, she gets angry and asks: why can’t I have skin like them?“
To try to combat this rare and very debilitating skin condition on a daily basis, the pre-teen is currently testing a new injection-based treatment, called Dupixent. But she still suffers from painful reactions in her face.
If the case of Summah is particularly severe, she is not the only one to suffer from eczema. THE Murdoch Children’s Research Institute indicates that Australian children have one of the highest incidences in the world, due in part to the high temperatures in the country.
In France, 850,000 children aged 6 to 11 and 700,000 adolescents suffer from atopic eczema. The figure reaches 2 million among adults, according to the Montpellier University Hospital.
