Athlete's foot
Overview
Athlete's foot is a common fungal infection that affects the feet. You can usually treat it with creams, sprays or powders from a pharmacy, but it can keep coming back.
Symptoms
One of the main symptoms of athlete's foot is itchy white patches between your toes. It can also cause sore and flaky patches on your feet. The skin can look red, but this may be less noticeable on brown or black skin. Sometimes the skin on your feet may become cracked or bleed. Athlete's foot can also affect your soles or sides of your feet. It sometimes causes fluid-filled blisters. If it's not treated, the infection can spread to your toenails and cause afungal nail infection.
Causes
You can catch athlete's foot from other people with the infection. You can get it by: walking barefoot in places where someone else has athlete's foot – especially changing rooms and showerstouching the affected skin of someone with athlete's foot walking barefoot in places where someone else has athlete's foot – especially changing rooms and showers touching the affected skin of someone with athlete's foot You're more likely to get it if you have wet or sweaty feet, or if the skin on your feet is damaged.
Treatment
If you have athlete's foot and treatments from a pharmacy have not worked, a GP may: send a small scraping of skin from your feet to a laboratory to check you have athlete's footprescribe asteroid creamto use alongside antifungal creamprescribe antifungal tablets – you might need to take these for several weeksrefer you to a skin specialist (dermatologist) for more tests and treatment if needed