What causes acrodermatitis in children?

Sometimes, some small red spots appear on children's bodies for no apparent reason. Although the children do not feel uncomfortable, they look particularly ugly. Parents are also very worried about this phenomenon. Generally, this problem is caused by acrodermatitis. So why do children have acrodermatitis? Let’s take a look at it together today.

Malabsorption of zinc in the intestine is a causative factor. Most cases have a positive family history.

1. Children who have long-term zinc deficiency and are treated with intravenous nutrition therapy may develop rashes and diarrhea similar to this disease. The symptoms will disappear or be alleviated after zinc treatment.

Using lactating mice as an animal model, after feeding them a zinc-free diet for several weeks, scaly skin lesions and dry and falling hair were seen, which are similar to the symptoms of this disease. The effect was rapid after zinc treatment.

2. Reduced zinc absorption: The diet in the Middle East contains a lot of phytate, which hinders the absorption of zinc and causes dwarfism with sexual dysfunction in the population, which is similar to the growth and development disorders seen in this disease.

3. The disease is effective after zinc supplementation. The food of patients with this disease contains low zinc, and the disease is effective after zinc supplementation. There is a small molecule zinc ligand in human milk. Although the zinc content in human milk is not high, it is easily absorbed by infants. In addition to human milk, other protein foods including cow's milk contain a small peptide that can easily complex with zinc in food to form a complexed state of zinc that is not easily absorbed by the human body. Normally, this small peptide will be hydrolyzed by short peptidase secreted by normal intestinal cells, but patients often lack this short peptidase in their bodies, so that the ingested zinc is chelated by the small peptide, causing zinc deficiency.

Therefore, when children suffer from zinc deficiency, the main problem is acrodermatitis, so at this time it is generally necessary to relieve the symptoms by zinc supplementation, so be sure to pay attention to proper zinc supplementation for children. When supplementing zinc, you must also be careful not to supplement too much, otherwise it will easily cause poisoning behavior in children.