This week's fun find came from our Clinical Mycology lab, where the astute technologists noticed this object on a microscopic evaluation of skin scrapings treated with calcofluor white. Identification? Is there any need to call the ordering clinician?
7 comments:
Demodex
Demodex folliculorum
Demodex folliculorum
These mites live inside almost every human's hair follicles, as commensals . Won’t cause any problems usually but if they multiply too much, they can cause itchy, bumpy or red skin on your face.
Probably Demodex brevis based on the shorter abdomen. As they are commensals of human skin (mainly the face), there would be no need to inform the requesting clinician.
Beautiful photographic rendition of a Demodex. I would agree with Sam that this mite resembles more to Demodex brevis, which resides in the sebaceous gland rather than its neighbor Demodex folliculorum which dwells in the hair follicle. Demodex mites infest domestic animals as well, cats harbor D. cati and D. gatoi. Dogs are hosts of D. canis and D. injai. We live simply in an entire plethora of microorganisms and each time I read up on a case of the Blog I find out more than I can keep in my two pixels memory.Thank you Dr. Pritt for such beneficial stimulus.
Florida Fan
Skin mite Demodex. No call to doc
Looking at the comments and the follow-up answer post, I'm fascinated in learning about how microscopic mites can inhabit tiny structures of the human body, such as the mentioned hair follicles and sebaceous glands. It's not the first thought I have when I think of microscopic life residing on/within the human body!
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