'I'm allergic to water - even crying burns my skin'

A woman has appeared on This Morningrevealing she is allergic to water - including her own tears - and shared the odd signs she started to notice before realising what was going on. Talking on the ITV show alongside hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard, Erin Cassidy said that it all started during swimming lessons in school.

She said: "So I actually hadn't had it up to the age of 14. I was in secondary school, I'd done GCSE PE, soI did swimming and that was one of my options.

"One day I went swimming with the school, come out and broken out in a reaction all over my chest and it was a burning sensation, really itchy."

After she went to get changed, she sought help from her teachers as the issue was not going away. Assuming it was the chlorine, she found it happened again a few weeks after, "and from that time onward, it was when I was bathing, showering, sweating and then from the age of 14, to now 24, I still break out really, really bad from it."

She sat on sofa with Doctor Zoe Williams, 45, to talk about how her allergy - called aquagenic urticaria - affects her day to day life and her experience of being dismissed by doctors.

She said that doctors "kept dismissing it" and they did not know what it was. She recalled: "So I kept going back and back and back and was just told to just take some antihistamines, it will die down.

"But then nine years later I went to a different GP surgery, due to relocating, he did all my checks and I was in there for 50 minutes and he had confirmed, it was a water allergy."

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In the beginning, Erin was also lost at how she could be allergic to water: "The more I was reacting to it, the sweat side, the shower side of things, I was like, maybe I could look into."

But every time she went to the doctors, because it's so rare, it was quickly dismissed with doctor saying it was just a rash and then she can get back on with her day.

Talking about her new GP, she said: "He sat down through everything, saw all my pictures, I had to document everything, he was like: "I can confirm it is a water allergy, it is becoming a lot more common in days, but it is still very rare but people do dismiss it because they don't know what it is."

What is Aquagenic Urticaria?

The name of her diagnosis is aquagenic urticaria and this occurs when someone gets in contact with water and has a break out in hives. According to WebMD, the rash often shows up 20-30 minutes after your skin comes into contact with water, though it can take several hours in some cases.

It adds that rashes usually vanish in 30-60 minutes once water is no longer touching your skin. However sometimes you develop other symptoms, including:

• Headache
• Shortness of breath
• Wheezing
• Dizziness
• Fainting

Experts do not know what causes aquagenic urticaria, however scientists have put forward a couple of theories. WedMD suggest that it could be that "some material that's dissolved in water passes through the skin and causes an allergic reaction. This substance, called an allergen, is what causes the hives, not the water itself. "

Can you cure Aquagenic Urticaria?

Dr Zoe said during her research, it seems that for some people people it can "just go away" but for others it does not. Because Erin has had it for 10 years, the doctor suggested that it could be "less likely it will go away" for her.

She added that there could be hope out there that there will be treatment in the future, but as of now, there is no cure or go-to treatment that can work for all.

How is Aquagenic Urticaria diagnosed?

A doctor may suspect aquagenic urticaria if you have a history of rashes after water exposure. Still, heat, cold, pressure, and other conditions can trigger similar rashes. Part of the doctor's job is to get rid of those other causes of rash.

Doctors usually diagnose aquagenic urticaria using a "water challenge test." Your doctor places a room-temperature wet compress on your chest, then checks for a rash after 20 minutes. They usually do this test on the upper half of your body since symptoms are more common in this region.