biomedicines Review Differential Diagnosis and Treatment of Itching in Children and Adolescents Seok-Young Kang † , Ji-Young Um † , Bo-Young Chung , Jin-Cheol Kim , Chun-Wook Park and Hye-One Kim * Department of Dermatology, Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, Hallym University, Seoul KS013, Korea;
[email protected] (S.-Y.K.);
[email protected] (J.-Y.U.);
[email protected] (B.-Y.C.);
[email protected] (J.-C.K.);
[email protected] (C.-W.P.) * Correspondence:
[email protected] † Authors equally contributed. Abstract: Itching is prevalent in children with skin disorders and associated with effects on their mood, quality of life, and social functioning. Surprisingly, there are no data on childhood prevalence of pruritus in the general population. The aim of this article is to explore the epidemiology, clinical manifestation, and treatment for itch (pruritus) in the pediatric population (from infancy to adoles- cence), and to be helpful to primary care physicians who assess and diagnose pediatric patients with itching. In this study, we searched for specific keywords using PubMed and MEDLINE (Ovid) and, then, refined the retrieved searches for each cause and treatment. As a result of reviewing the litera- ture, atopic dermatitis was shown to be the most common cause of itching, especially during infancy and through preschool. Not only skin disorders but also systemic diseases, drugs, and postburn states can predispose an individual to itching in childhood. There are traditional and newly developed treatment modalities for itching in pediatric patients. However, because the pharmacokinetics and Citation: Kang, S.-Y.; Um, J.-Y.; pharmacodynamics of childhood are different from those of adults, the medications for itching have Chung, B.-Y.; Kim, J.-C.; Park, C.-W.; to be applied carefully for these age groups.