The Use of Antifungal Agents in the Treatment of Dermatophytoses in Childhood

Lee, Kwang Hoon; Lee, Ju Hee

Abstract

Dermatophytoses commonly generated in childhood, which account for 7~15% of total pediatric skin diseases, do not show much differences with skin symptoms of adult dermatophytoses, but occasionally show far atypical appearances, leading to very difficult determination to make for its diagnosis. In addition, another striking difference to note is that patients or guardians prefer to treating the fungal infections with topical agent applications rather than in oral treatment approach. Normally, most of the dermatophytoses can be sufficiently treated only by the topical agents, and this approach is further recommended in that treating the children should be considered putting its top priority on whether or not the drugs have any side effects, and the patients are well responded to the drugs. For these reasons, treating with topical agents should be considered to apply in the first place. Despite the above approach, immunosuppressive children and patients with tinea capitis or onychomycosis do not have other treatment choices than oral antifungal agents. Since tinea capitis are very common in most children, selecting an appropriate oral antifungal agents becomes more important. Considering the use of oral drugs for children patients are not yet officially approved, clinicians are sometimes faced with their decisions hard to make which new antifungal agents to apply, or how many dosages or how long the selected antifungal agents should be taken. Based on the research information that has been partly investigated to the present time in the United States, the authors reviewed the methods of using oral antifungal agents in the treatment of dermatophytoses in children.