What is café au lait spot in children

We all know that children can be said to be the hope of the family. However, what many families hate most is that their children have some health problems. Children's skin is very delicate. Once a problem occurs, it is easy to find. Many parents will find that their children have brown spots on their bodies. Generally, such a phenomenon is caused by milk coffee spots, but the incidence rate is not particularly high in life. Generally, parents are always very worried when such symptoms occur, but they know relatively little about it. Let's learn about what milk coffee spots are in children.

What is café au lait spot in children

Café au lait spots, also known as cafe au lait spots, are light brown patches that can be found at birth. The color ranges from light brown to dark brown, but each patch is the same color and very uniform. The depth is not affected by sunlight. The size ranges from a few millimeters to tens of centimeters. The boundaries are clear and the surface skin texture is completely normal. The microscopic manifestation is very similar to freckles, mainly characterized by an abnormal increase in the amount of melanin in the epidermis, but the number of melanocytes is normal.

symptom

1. Café au lait spots can occur anywhere on the body and will not disappear on their own. It has been reported that 10%-20% of children have single café au lait spots. More than 90% of patients with neurofibroma have café-au-lait spots, so some people believe that when 6 or more café-au-lait spots with a diameter of 1.5 cm appear, the presence of neurofibroma should be highly suspected.

2. Café au lait spots can be diagnosed based on the presence of clearly-margined café au lait-colored spots at birth.

3. It must be differentiated from freckles and simple freckles. Freckles are small in spots, without large patchy lesions, and mainly occur on the face. Simple lentigo is usually a unilateral localized disease. Pathology can also help with identification.

The pathological changes of coffee spots include increased epidermal melanin, especially in the basal layer. There are giant melanosomes in DOPA-stained melanocytes and keratinocytes in the basal layer, and the melanocytes in the basal layer are normal or slightly increased.

Café au lait spots are a hereditary skin disease. In this disease, the amount of melanin in melanocytes and keratinocytes in the pigmented spots increases, the melanocytes become overactive, and a large amount of melanin is produced, forming pigmented spots.

The above is an introduction to what are café-au-lait spots in children. After understanding it, we know that such a phenomenon is generally easy to be discovered, and we must go to a regular specialist hospital for examination. Otherwise, if it develops seriously, it is particularly easy to cause skin fibroma and other phenomena, which is also particularly detrimental to the child's health. Once café-au-lait spots appear on the child's face, it will also affect the child's image.