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Hives
What Causes Those Angry Red Bumps?
By Katherine Bontrager
One morning when Kelly Mooney's daughter, Alexis, came out of the shower, the 3-year-old was covered from head to toe in angry, red bumps. Her parents rushed her to the doctor's office thinking that the hives were chicken pox. As it turned out, discovering the cause of Alexis' red blotches would not be so simple.
"We were told to wait six weeks while treating the hives with antihistamines to see if she was having a reaction to something," says the West Linn, Ore., mom. "After six weeks, the hives were then classified as chronic, and Alexis had to be tested for their origins."
Months of testing, with many blood tests, helped doctors rule out lupus, leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis, which can present in the form of chronic hives. "After that, they informed us hers was one of the 80 percent of all chronic hive cases of 'no known origin,' and will likely go away on their own," Mooney says.
As Mooney discovered, hives are something that almost every child will encounter – to differing degrees – during the first few years of life. But how can those red marks have so many countless causes, and more important, how can they be treated in little ones?
"Hives are raised pink to red spots or welts, which often can look like mosquito bites," says Dr. Anne Maitland, a New York City allergist/immunologist and a fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. "An episode of hives usually starts with an itch and then the rash will appear. The shape and size of hives can vary, from the size of a pencil eraser to large welts, stretching inches across. An acute episode may last a few minutes to several hours, with an individual hive resolving within 24 hours of onset. It's not uncommon for these episodes to reoccur, lasting days or weeks. This is a very common condition, with up to 20 percent of the population having hives at one time or another in their lives."
