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Walter B. Shelley, MD; Margaret G. Wood, MD

JAMA. 1976;236(10):1144-1145.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

NO CLINICAL sign in the skin is better known than the thread-like burrow hollowed out by the female itch mite. Truly a tunnel of love, it is in this burrow that copulation, ovulation, and birth of the larvae occur.¹ Pathognomonic as it is for scabies, the burrow has somewhat blunted our appreciation of the lesion produced by the developmental or junior forms of Sarcoptes scabiei, viz, the papule. It is exquisitely pruritic and arises quickly in response to a larval or nymphal mite boring into the outermost epidermis. Thus, the papule is surmounted by a virtually invisible chamber for the critical moulting phase.

In the absence of burrows, it is these papules that must receive our closest attention in the search for the agent causing scabies. This communication outlines the prolonged complex diagnostic struggle that was eventually won only by finding the larval itch mite within its moulting chamber . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Dermatology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia.

Footnotes
Reprints not available.

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