Molluscum Contagiosum Treatment With Ayurveda

Molluscum contagiosum is a viral skin infection, commonly found among children. It looks like a small, pearl shaped, pinkish white nodular eruption on the skin.

It commonly affects the age group of 1-10yrs but is also seen in the immune-compromised adults.

Risk factor:

other allergies
family history of allergies
drugs which weaken the immune system

Cause:

DNA Poxvirus or Molluscum contagiosum virus.

Location:

In children primarily on the trunk, extremities and face. It occurs anywhere except the palms and soles.
In adults occurs mainly on lower abdomen, genitalia and inner thighs.
Lesions are usually found in groups but can be widely disseminated.

Incubation period:

It is variable between 14days to 6 months.

Symptoms:

Diagnosis is made merely by the presentation.
Benign self limiting infection.
Presents as a small, soft, dome shaped, skin colored, umblicated papule.
They contain semi fluid casseous matter which becomes solid with time.
It is generally not painful but may itch and irritate.
If it bursts it becomes painful, gets secondary bacterial infections, may lead to scarring and bleeding. In 10% cases eczema develops around the lesion.
There are usually 20 lesions but may be more in HIV and eczema cases.

Spread:

In children it is through skin contact and touch, especially at schools, swimming pools and by handling objects with the virus like towels.
Auto inoculation or self spread especially in children.
In adults mainly by sexual contact.

Management:

It is a self limiting infection which cures by itself if left untreated but this may at times take over 6 months.

Treatments reduce this duration and reduce the chances of spread.

Conventional management:

Surgical invasive methods like cryosurgery, laser therapy, scraping, de-coring, freezing, electro-surgery. These methods can however leave scars.

Homoeopathic management:

Homoeopathy offers a painless, non surgical, non scarring treatment for molluscum. Emphasis is on the cure of the disease than the suppression of the lesions. Homoeopathy believes that the only way to regain complete health is by removing all the signs and symptoms present and not just the disease, hence it aims not only to treat the molluscum but also its underlying cause and individual susceptibility which lead to this infection.

In individuals with underlying immune deficiency homoeopathy proves very effective in building the body’s immunity and stimulating the body’s own healing mechanism to fight the infection.

Therapeutically several remedies are available to treat molluscum which can be selected on the basis of symptoms like the cause, presentation and modalities.

To work upon the susceptibility to the infection, individual constitutional remedy is selected.The commonly used remedies to cure Molluscum are silicea, thuja, mercurius, natrum mur.