Hello doctorr, I hope you can help. I was diagnosed HIV positive on Sept. 26, 2001 and am not on any threrpy. Tcell counts/viral load was 318/5500, one month later 523/24K and as of last week 584/8k. The same week of my diagnosis I had an eye infection for which my eye doctor prescribed tetracycline. This med gave me an absolutely horrific, excruciating fixed drug eruption on the glans of my penis that took two months to heal. Now it seems every two months or so I get a recurrence of this in the same area, not anywhere near the magnitude of what I had in September, but the skin on the glans gets red, inflammed and only what I can descibed as a crepe-like, lizard-skin appearance. This I can eradicate in a few weeks time with a topical ointment of cutivate presribed to me by a dermatologist. Is something like this a normal occurence during HIV infection? It makes me crazy when this happens, mostly from the itch and the stigma I feel from it. Why is your insight?

I don't know why you have a recurring eruption on your penis. Has a dermatologist seen the eruption again since the first episode? It is also possible to develop psoriasis in the genital area and it would respond to a steroid ointment as well. Another reason to see a dermatologist is that putting steroid ointment on genitalia is usually not advised, especially as you are doing this repeatedly.