Scabies appears rife in Auckland pre-schools, and it's often misdiagnosed

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-08-19 00:01

New Zealand

Image by Andrew Ebrahim on UnSplash

A study of early childhood centres in low socio-economic areas of Auckland has revealed a high prevalence of scabies. Scabies is caused by mites, and there’s growing evidence that it’s associated with bacterial skin infections such as school sores, and serious complications such as rheumatic fever and kidney disease. Early in 2021, researchers looked at 67 schoolchildren, finding more than half had signs of scabies lesions. Of the children whose parents provided medical history information, 18% were confirmed to have clinical or suspected scabies. Many of these children had a large number of lesions, suggesting that scabies had been present for some time without treatment, and several had recently been diagnosed with a different skin condition, such as eczema, by their family doctor.

News release

From: New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA)

Evidence is increasing that scabies is linked to important diseases of childhood such as acute rheumatic fever. The condition is very common in Pacific Island nations. The prevalence of the condition in New Zealand, however, has not been well understood. In preliminary findings of three early childcare centres in socio-economically deprived areas of Auckland, 56% of surveyed children had lesions which were consistent with scabies. This indicates that scabies infestation is much more common than was previously appreciated.

Journal/
conference: New Zealand Medical Journal

Organisation/s: University of Auckland

Funder: Funding: This study was funded by the New Zealand Government through the Health Research Council (grant ID number: 19/367).

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