The association between Candida albicans and lesions of serborrhoeic eczemia.

Abstract

SUMMARY.— A study of 86 infants aged 2 to 9 months who had sehorrhoeic eczema, and a similar number of clinically unaffected controls, matched for age and sex, shows that for each of 8 external areas of the skin surface the incidence of C. albicans was significantly higher among the infants with the skin disease (the differences ranged from about 8 to 39%). This conclusion was also true when only clinically affected areas of the skin surface were considered but more data are required to discover whether, as is suggested by some of the present data, a similar conclusion is justified when only clinically unaffected areas of the skin surface, of children clinically affected elsewhere, are considered. Of the infants studied, 69% of those with seborrhoeic eczema were infected with C. albicans at one or more areas of the skin surface (including the buccal mucous membrane) compared with 38% of those who had no clinical skin disease. Attention is drawn to the high incidence of C. albicans on the buccal mucous membrane of clinically unaffected infants (31·4% were so infected) and to the fact that the majority of infants infected with C. albicans had the organism either on that site, the margin of the anus, or on both. The implications of these findings for future studies of the nature of the association between C. albicans and lesions of seborrhoeic eczema are emphasized.