Authors: Lombardi Grace, Check H Jerome.
Rationale: There is evidence that the etiology of many skin disorders with or without obvious lesions may be secondary to excessive infiltration of irritants into the dermis causing inflammation. There is evidence that taking medications that release more dopamine from sympathetic nerve fibers may prove highly effective for treating a larger variety of skin disorders despite resistance to standard therapy. Data support the concept that dopamine acts to diminish cellular permeability thus inhibiting infiltration of excessive irritants.
Objective: to determine if dextroamphetamine, a dopaminergic drug, could relieve generalized pruritus' without skin lesions in a 30-year-old woman with 1 1⁄2 years of pruritus.
Findings: The pruritus had moderately relieved shortly after treatment with 20mg amphetamine salts 11.6 mg dextroamphetamine sulfate (20mg amphetamine salts) and was completely eradicated with 23.2mg (40 mg amphetamine salts. In addition to the drug relieving her pruritus, she had a marked reduction in her fibromyalgia and dysmenorrhea and this probably helped to correct her infertility problems.
Conclusions: A literature search found only one previous case of improvement of generalized idiopathic pruritus but with treatment of dextroamphetamine in a menopausal woman. Her pruritus was ascribed possibly to dry skin related to menopause related to estrogen deficiency. Thus, this is only the second case of successful treatment of idiopathic generalized pruritus without skin lesions with dextroamphetamine sulfate, but the first one in a younger woman.
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