Trending: ‘livedo’

Livedo (pronounced /lihv-EE-doh/) was among our top lookups on April 21st, 2020, following news reports on COVID-19 symptoms which are not lung-related.

One of the more unusual rashes is one called “livedo” … Davis says this type of rash can appear from emotional responses, such as being afraid or embarrassed, or can be in reaction to the cold. But in this case, it’s an immune response. “Some patients with COVID are getting a livedo pattern on their skin and that's when it looks faint as if you've been embarrassed or cold or scared, but some patients are having a more intense livedo rash, meaning that it's just redder and appears coarser,” says Davis.
— Abby Haglage, Yahoo Life (yahoo.com), 21 Apr. 2020

We define livedo as “a bluish usually patchy discoloration of the skin.” The word comes from the Latin word livēre, meaning “to be blue.” Livedo shares this root with a handful of other English words, including livid (a word which, depending on the context, means either “black and blue” or “reddish”).

However, patients with angiotropic lymphoma have a poor prognosis, said Dr. White. These patients generally present with firm plaques, sometimes with a livedo pattern.
— Brian McCann, Dermatology Times, May 1998