Hives Like Hundreds of Mosquito Bites

On the 7TH January 2016, Ute Weiss recalls very closely. When she woke up, the lip was swollen thick, and she could not explain why. Today she knows it because it did not stop at this one swelling. Ute Weiss hives.

In the summer before, she had to swell in the palms, but disappeared again, tells the 47-year-old from Berlin. "In November I got small welts on the forearm. They went away quickly, so I've never been thinking."

In fact, these symptoms are related. Since January 7, they no longer occur only occasionally, but every day. Suddenly, the skin reddens and are formed wheals, which may be a pinhead small or large as a palm. They are accompanied by intense itching - as if you have a nettle touched, whose Latin name Urtica is. Hence comes the medical term of hives: urticaria.

Immune Keeper Astray

It often begins with an acute onset: The wheals disappear after a few hours. This can be repeated. Often after six weeks rest, then speak experts from acute spontaneous urticaria. Keeps the hives for more than six weeks, it is a chronic spontaneous urticaria.
What's this?

For skin, a reaction occurs because the mast cells are activated in the skin, sentinel cells of the immune system. "They are necessary for the control of viruses and bacteria," says Marcus Maurer of the Department of Dermatology and Allergology at the Charité in Berlin. The activated mast cells release mediators such as histamine from the tissues. It binds to receptors on the facade of blood vessels. It will expand and become permeable - liquid exits, and it formed the wheals.

Also in deeper layers of the skin and the subcutaneous tissue, the histamine cause swelling, called angioedema. Moreover, the Histamine also binds to nerve fibers, which triggers the itching.

The fact that the mast cells are activated, can have various causes:

•     Pain medications such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and diclofenac,
•     Preservatives or sweeteners and coloring agents in food,
•     Cold, heat or pressure.

Because it helps to avoid the triggers that cause sufferers best diary of what they ate, whether they suffered from stress and when the number of wheals occurred.

The cause of hives can also be located in the body itself: as a tooth-root or tonsillitis; which should then be treated. "Some of those affected have the germ Helicobacter pylori in the stomach," says Elmar Ehringshäuser the Professional Association of German Dermatologists in Euskirchen. Urticaria experts as Maurer suggest that the immune system develops a reaction against itself, for example, a protein classifies as foreign and dangerous.

Dangerous swelling in the throat

In some of the patients are not found the cause of the urticaria. Ute Weiss, for example, has it checked and can make an allergy test without the cause could be explored.

For her, the hives occur daily, though she gets the usual in urticaria treatment with antihistamines. Affected avail the funds a day so that the release of histamine is blocked. It is possible that other drugs are used if the antihistamines are not sufficient.

Affected should additionally be prescribed an emergency kit with histamine blockers since angioedema can also occur in the throat and mouth. Thresholds at her suddenly, threatening respiratory distress.

The hives makes sufferers usually very to create. For severe itching comes that they feel disfigured by the wheals.

"Even a mosquito bite can make a mad," says Maurer. "Then, imagine, you would have hundreds of mosquito bites." Many patients suffer from the itching during the day under concentration problems at night from insomnia. They also feel mercy of the disease. "The hives come when they want, and go when they want," says Ute Weiss.