Doctors find skin disorder caused by too much gaming, Sony responds

Forget Wii knee or whatever you call it. Doctors now have something new to watch out for when dealing with gamers: the PlayStation palmar hidradenitis, a skin disorder caused by excessive use of consoles. No danger of seeing health warnings from the surgeon general on console boxes though.

Details after the link.

Forget Wii knee or whatever you call it.

Doctors now have something new to watch out for when dealing with gamers: the PlayStation palmar hidradenitis, a skin disorder caused by excessive use of consoles.

The condition was found in the case of a12-year-old girl in a Swiss hospital. She had intensely painful sores on the palms of her hands.

It’s believed that the sores come from playing too much video games. She recently started playing on her PlayStation console for several hours a day. She continued to play even after the sores showed. The doctors suspect that the problem was caused by

tight and continuous grasping of the console’s hand-grips, and repeated pushing of the buttons, alongside sweating caused by the tension of the game.

No danger of seeing health warnings from the surgeon general on console boxes though. The disorder is already a known condition called “idiopathic eccrine hidrantetis,” a condition associated with intense sweating, and typically found on the soles of feet in children who do heavy physical activity.

This is just the first time the condition was observed to affect only the hands, which is why it was specially dubbed the PlayStation palmar whatsitentis. Nina Goad of the British Association of Dermatologists remarked about the case:

If you’re worried about soreness on your hands when playing a games console, it might be sensible to give your hands a break from time to time, and don’t play excessively if your hands are prone to sweating.

And what does Sony have to say about it? An SCEE spokesman said:

We firmly believe that video gaming is a legitimate entertainment pastime like watching movies, listening to music, or reading books. As with any leisure pursuit there are possible consequences of not following common sense, health advice and guidelines, as can be found within our instruction manuals.

PlayStation was launched in 1995 and has sold hundreds of millions of consoles over the last 13 years. We do not wish to belittle this research and will study the findings with interest. This is the first time we have ever heard of a complaint of this nature.

So use your noggins, gamers. If your hands are starting to get sores, then it’s time to put the controller down.

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Via BBC