Scaly Skin and Ichthyosis
Probably everybody at some point notices some flakes – some scales – on their skin. Maybe some dry patches on the lower legs? Or the peeling that happens after a sunburn. But most of the time our skin – if it is healthy – doesn’t produce visible scales or flakes. Instead we shed our skin invisibly, single invisible cell by single invisible cell.
But some people are born with a condition in which visible scales accumulate on most or all of their skin surface. This condition, called ‘ichthyosis‘, we now recognize is not just one thing, but instead represents a whole family of inherited conditions that have this feature in common.
[Read more…] about Scaly Skin and Ichthyosis (Nothing to Do with Fish Skin)Although each member of the ichthyosis family may be quite uncommon to rare, as we learn about their underlying genetic causes, these conditions are teaching us a lot about how the skin works.