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Dermatophagia (from Ancient Greek δέρμα — lit. skin and φαγεία lit. eating) or dermatodaxia (from δήξις, lit. biting) is a compulsion disorder of gnawing or biting one's own skin, most commonly at the fingers.
The fingers have been compulsively picked and chewed in someone with excoriation disorder and dermatophagia. Compulsive picking of the face using nail pliers and tweezers. Episodes of skin picking are often preceded or accompanied by tension, anxiety, or stress. In some cases, following picking, the affected person may feel depressed.
Biting the fingers and lips is a definitive feature of Lesch–Nyhan syndrome; in other syndromes associated with self-injury, the behaviors usually consist of head banging and nonspecific self-mutilation, but not biting of the cheeks, lips and fingers.
Nail biting, also known as onychophagy or onychophagia, is an oral compulsive habit of biting one's fingernails. It is sometimes described as a parafunctional activity, the common use of the mouth for an activity other than speaking, eating, or drinking.
Stereotypic movement disorder (SMD) is a motor disorder with onset in childhood involving restrictive and/or repetitive, nonfunctional motor behavior (e.g., hand waving or head banging), that markedly interferes with normal activities or results in bodily injury.
Causes. In children the primary source of infection is the orofacial area, and it is commonly inferred that the virus (in this case commonly HSV-1) is transferred by the cutting, chewing or sucking of fingernail or thumbnail. [citation needed]
They tend to gravitate to folded areas of the skin to burrow, including between the fingers, the elbow and wrist area, the waist, around genitals, and the buttocks, etc.
Chewing fingers (in extreme cases, leading to amputation) Possible causes. This section will focus on the causes for autophagia in humans. There is no single primary cause for autophagia. Due to limited medical research which differentiates autophagia from typical nail biting practices, the causes of autophagia remain broad.
Causes. Acute paronychia is usually caused by bacteria. It is often treated with antibiotics, either topical (applied to the skin) or oral (taken by mouth), or both. Chronic paronychia is most often caused by a yeast infection of the soft tissues around the nail but can also be traced to a bacterial infection.
A fetus robustly sucking on areas such as forearm, fingers and hands while in utero can cause a blister on those affected areas presenting at birth, with a diameter ranging from 0.5 centimeters to 1.5 centimeters. The blisters commonly happen on one side of the involved area but in some cases, they are on both extremities.