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[hattiville]

Hi everyone,
I'm new here ... and am wondering if anyone has any thoughts on elidel and increased demodex production. I didn't see a recent post ... so I thought I'd start a new thread.

In desparately searching the internet for sound advice on my particular experience, I kept coming to the posts of a Mrs.Z in this forum...so if she's out there, I would be so grateful for her help! But maybe others have had a similar experience?

the story: my new derm diagnosed me with steroid-induced rosacea from Locoid (from the old derm) and gave me Elidel to treat, which worked somewhat for a few weeks with increasing redness, until a week ago when it flared-up in a state much, much worse than the original reaction to the locoid. My face is tingly and itchy and that feeling seems to be spreading to my scalp and arms -- I'm guessing demodex.

So my humble questions for you are: did anyone ever try to treat the demodex with other means (TTO, Borax) in addition to (together with) antibiotics/metrogel/eventually accutane? My doc just called in an rx for Oracea for me and I am tolerating the metrogel, the postules are diminished but not the inflammation/scaliness/redness & my face is dry and tight. ... But wonder if I should be doing more. Is oracea/metrogel enough to kill them on my face?

ideas?

[Someguy238]

So you're not sure if you have demodicidosis or not?

I'd have a good talk with your derm about demodex mites. Chances are that they're going to tell you that research is still being done, that there's no proof of mites doing much damage, blah blah blah, but you can still try to talk them into at least doing a test to check for an abundance of mites. If not, you can always search around for a local derm that will at least do the test.

The problem with demodex is that 1) everyone has them, the question is whether you have an abundance or not so checking your own face (as certain... "chinese websites" might scam you into trying) won't really help as you WILL find the mites no matter what and 2) demodex are reported to be very difficult to kill off so simply using TTO at home may or may not help.