What causes skin tightness on face while treating SLE?

Posted on Tue, 24 May 2016

Question: I have SLE (mild symptoms except when I have a flare which I've not had for a while now). I eat healthy - balanced diet with lots of fruit and veg and drink 2lt water daily.
In the last 2 weeks I have had extremely dry tight skin on the face that burns and is sore. I went to the GP who gave me an emmolient but it hasn't made any difference. I wake up and my skin is so tight I can't smile or the sides of my lips will tear. I am putting on the emmolient (dermol 500) a couple of times an hour but the relief lasts for just a few mins at a time.
I can't concentrate on my work and it's driving me crazy.

Answered by Dr. Shruti Rijhwani (36 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
You need evaluation.

Detailed Answer:
Dear Madam,

Thank you for posting your query on HCM.

Well, Since you already suffer from SLE, we can take the skin tightening as just dryness , there is a possibility of overlap with other autoimmune disease like scleroderma which causes tightening of skin around the mouth at first leading to oral puckering etc . I would like to see what was your ENA profile. Also please meet your Rheumatologist as GPs will not be able to analyse all symptoms of yours .

Get back to me if you have further queries.
Regards,
Dr. Shruti

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Deepak