Spider Bite - Skin Pigmentation?

[Timmy]

Just a quick question for you spider bite experts.

I’ve got a young football player who has a brown skin pigmentation that spreads down both arms and torso which appeared after being bitten by a white tailed spider. His normal skin colour is olive but there’s random blotches of darker brown. Its quiet difficult to paint a mental picture, I guess if you got brown ink and randomly splashed it around his body it’d look similar. He says it sometimes gets itchy.

Just wondering if anyone knew the pathophysiology behind something like this? The bite occurred a few years back and his had it check out.

[mshow00]

I used to work with a girl when I was in high school who had the same thing, so I do not believe it has to do with the spider bite. She told me it was a variant on the same skin condition that causes dark African Americans to get the white splotches.

[VentMedic]

I used to work with a girl when I was in high school who had the same thing, so I do not believe it has to do with the spider bite. She told me it was a variant on the same skin condition that causes dark African Americans to get the white splotches.

That is usually Vitiligo which is an autoimmune disease. It is also not just in the African American population. People of many skin colors can have it but it may not be as noticeable in the fair skinned. Hyperpigmentation can also present as part of an inflammatory process prior to depigmentation.

Billie Jean King, Dudley Moore and Steve Martin as well as Michael Jackson are fairly well known people with Vitiligo.

Hyperpigmentation can also be present in inflammatory responses to spider bites especially the brown recluse. It usually resolves but some people may still have some darkened pigment many months afterwards. It can also be seen in other inflammatory conditions which you may have seen when examining the extremities of people with chronic illnesses.

Sidenote: Michael Jackson does have Vitiligo which started on his hand, hence, "the gloved one". Bleaching to even out the skin color is common. Unfortunately, any normal pigment that has been bleached will color again in the sunlight. For that reason he will have to wear the shroud like head coverings and gloves. I have no explanations for any of his other disorders.