This woman sweats blood due to a scary medical condition
Okay, hold on to your hats, because this one’s a doozy. A woman in Italy reportedly sweats blood because of a rare health condition called hematohidrosis. Yes, this means that blood seeps out of her skin — most often her face — even when she has no cuts or gashes. The woman is only 21-years-old, and this has been a problem for her for three years. The bloody episodes seem to have no distinct pattern in terms of when or why they occur.
According to the National Institute of Health’s Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center, the cause of hematohidrosis is unknown (meaning there is no cure) and symptoms can occur spontaneously. This is all hard to believe, but it’s a real thing.
"Signs and symptoms include sweating blood, crying bloody tears, bleeding from the nose, bleeding from the ears, or oozing blood from other skin surfaces," the NIH notes.
The condition is called hematohidrosis, and it makes patients appear to be sweating blood. https://t.co/ZH6CeXsoAM pic.twitter.com/xXzpvmGhbD
— WebMD (@WebMD) October 26, 2017
The condition is incredibly difficult to manage, and unsurprisingly, the woman has been isolating herself from the public. The Guardian notes that doctors at the University of Florence prescribed her anti-anxiety medications and blood pressure medications, and the latter did reduce the bleeding — but it’s not a long term solution.
“Our patient had become socially isolated owing to embarrassment over the bleeding and she reported symptoms consistent with major depressive disorder and panic disorder,” doctors Roberto Maglie and Marzia Caproni documented in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Hopefully a cure or more effective treatment plan (at very least) will be discovered soon for anyone suffering from this condition.
