Psoriasis is contagious or not - how to treat a person with similar skin manifestations

Psoriasis is a skin disease that occurs suddenly and accompanies a person for a long time, significantly complicating his life with his appearance. If you or someone from your environment develops a similar rash, the question immediately arises: "Is psoriasis contagious or not?"

What causes psoriasis?

Psoriasis is not an infectious disease, that is, it is not contagious. It occurs after stress or a serious illness, at the site of an injury to the skin or in places where the skin is often rubbed with clothing or work items. Therefore, the question of whether psoriasis is contagious or not, occurs in people who noticed that a characteristic rash appeared in those places where there used to be pustules or other inflammatory elements

Often the disease affects those whose relatives suffered from such skin manifestations. And it's not about infectiousness, but in a defective gene that provokes an excessively active division of skin cells.

How to understand if this is psoriasis or not?

The disease has several types, so the elements of the rash with psoriasis can differ. The main signs of psoriasis are the appearance of a rash with such characteristics:

- pink spots that can merge with each other, reaching 5 or more centimeters in diameter;

- the skin under them does not turn pale when stretched;

- the rash is enlarged due to peripheral growth;

If you scrape a psoriatic plaque with a slide, you can note a triad: first, the element resembles a stearin stain (like a wax or stearin candle), if you scrape off another layer, a smooth pink surface will be visible, and if this layer is scraped off, then at the place of the former element Remains a point of blood.

Psoriatic plaques can occur on the knees, elbows, those skin surfaces that are most often sweated and / or rubbed with clothing. The rash may be accompanied by itching or burning.

Joints, eyes, large vessels and the heart, too, can strike such a disease as psoriasis. In this case, is it contagious or not? No. And even if scales are scraped off from psoriatic plaques with clothing, even during the progression of the disease it is impossible for them to get infected, but on condition that it is exactly psoriasis.

How is the disease treated?

For treatment, various methods can be used: this is physiotherapy, and local therapy (ointments, creams), and taking pills or injections. There is no one remedy that would help everyone to cure the disease 100%. Therefore, it is immediately impossible to answer the question about how to get rid of psoriasis in your case.

For treatment apply:

1) PUVA therapy - irradiation of the skin with ultraviolet rays of a certain spectrum, while a person should take special tablets - photosensitizers. This method is the most effective at the moment.

2) Ointment "Psorkutan". Its active ingredient is a vitamin D3 derivative. This drug is nonhormonal, and it not only cleans the rash, but also helps to interrupt the pathological process. Causes a prolonged remission in most patients.

3) Ointment with dithranol.

4) The use of analogues of vitamin A: preparations "Acitretinum", "Neotigazon". Such medications help to stop the disorderly division of skin cells, which cause psoriatic plaques.

5) Hormonal drugs. The most effective is Diprospan. It is administered in intramuscular injections for 2-3 weeks, 1 injection per week.

6) Ointments based on salicylic acid, sulfur, urea.

7) Ointments containing hormonal components: "Sinaphlan", hydrocortisone or prednisolone ointment.

In addition to drugs in the treatment of psoriasis, it is very important to comply with the diet: do not eat sharp, smoked and salty foods, alcohol. Once supposedly vanquished psoriasis can occur again after bias in the diet, stress or overwork, after a severe hypothermia. A person can get an exacerbation of the disease after seeing another patient with a bright characteristic rash. But this does not mean that you need to think again about whether psoriasis is contagious or not: just a person became very excited, remembered how terrible it was with such a rash (this is also stress), and because of this, there was a relapse of the disease.

You can get infected only by illness, which is caused by some kind of infection. In the case of psoriasis, this is an abnormal division of skin cells, which is triggered by internal causes, and it is impossible to become infected with it. Therefore, if one of your relatives is sick, do not avoid this person, but, on the contrary, give him all kinds of support, because he already finds it difficult to live with such a disease.