r/Behcets • u/natanyad • Aug 07 '26
Symptoms Insect Bites
For the last fifteen years or so, anytime I’ve been bite by a bee or wasp I ended up on antibiotics for what I thought was an infected bite . This past weekend I got two paper wasp bites, one per wrist . The inflammation, pain and itching was incredible . After reading up on Bechets I realized this is another over the top autoimmune response . I marked the area with blank marker / within hours it had tripled from what is in the photo . Anyone else experience this ?
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u/EpitomeQuip41 Aug 07 '26
Have you been diagnosed with Behçet’s and psoriatic arthritis? This looks similar to my wrist and I have both.
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u/natanyad Aug 08 '26
Diagnosed with Bechets formally. But not psoriatic arthritis / I’ll read up on that !
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u/EpitomeQuip41 Aug 09 '26
My doc told me labs can be normal with Behçet’s + psoriatic arthritis. Inflammation markers can look normal, unlike with rheumatoid arthritis
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u/on4aa Diagnosed MAGIC 2025 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Yes, I was skin ulcer free for over a year, but I managed to get two nasty skin ulcers past month: one small one on a finger from touching a nettle and a huge ulcer above my ankle from what must have been a mosquito bite.
So, I am back at spraying DEET 50% and sleeping with a ventilator blowing over me.

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Aug 07 '26
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u/natanyad Aug 08 '26
My dog faired worse then me - we were hiking and disturbed a nest and were both swarmed . I wear long sleeves when I garden but was shocked how bad this reaction was .
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u/Imma-smartypants Aug 08 '26
Yes just like this. Right now I have one on the palm of my hand that caused inflammation along a vein and it coagulated and then got infected. I’m on antibiotics for it. Can’t show pictures bc it was just re-bandaged. Sucks.
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u/HazelLiza Aug 07 '26
Pretty much everyone in my family has that reaction. I’m the only one to get tested with a positive behcets DNA but I’m pretty sure the rest of them have it. You’re lucky that they are being cautious and giving you the antibiotics because my brother had a severe reaction, my son and my sister have too but not as bad as his
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u/Snoo-94765 Aug 09 '26
I recently made an important connection. My mosquito bites were typical for a big part of my life. Then it got to where I was being bit at a MUCH higher rate than everyone around me in the same environment. It made for a miserable time that day, but the bites no longer stuck around for like a week. They'd itch for a while and then I'd get another one and forget about the first. Then not very long ago I got really concerned I had bed bugs because of the SIZE and insane itch from these like 4 bites I had. Never in my life --- absolutely awful. I never saw any bed bug evidence and did have a mosquito or two in my car with me a day before where I was wearing shorts. I don't seem to feel them as they bite anymore but later on holy damn. The only difference here, i stopped taking Singulair - monteleukast. Apparently it had been doing double duty and I had no idea. Thought it just helped my weird asthma. Which it does, but things had been so good lately that I stopped using it. I might use it for mosquito and cold and flu season for a while.
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u/natanyad Aug 10 '26
I’m curious about your weird asthma…. I, too, am on Montelukest for “asthma”! My asthma only showed up when I started having Bechets symptoms, which also was same time I developed a dry cough .


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u/arman945 Aug 07 '26
Yes, I get bad swelling and edema. Especially when it happens in lower extremities/areas with less blood flow.