“PLEASE HELP ME” begins this reader in her submission, in which she details a “form of infestation” she has been dealing with for three months. Our reader has been to see multiple medical professionals with no luck in treating what she suspects to be the real problem, and she asks for our help in identifying what that problem may be.

A man infested with a parasite in Crystal Springs, Florida has reached out to us with photos of marks all over his body. He asks if scabies can infest “most of your body”, implying that that is what he thinks this parasite may be, but also asks if there is a similar parasite that does this.

A reader wrote to us recently about some small white worms on his skin. The reader immediately indicates that his skin problem appears to be caused by a small white worm, meaning that he might not be dealing with a worm at all. Indeed, we think our reader is not actually experiencing a problem associated with any sort of worm. Rather, he may be experiencing symptoms associated with scabies, an infection caused by mites that is sometimes known as the “seven-year itch.” Below we outline why we think the small white worms affecting our reader’s skin are not in fact small white worms, but are rather mites that are causing scabies.