{"id":877708,"date":"2026-10-10T18:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877708\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T18:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:22:12","slug":"a-symptom-in-your-fingernail-could-point-to-cancer-psoriasis-or-an-sti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877708\/","title":{"rendered":"A symptom in your fingernail could point to cancer, psoriasis \u2014 or an STI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your nails might be trying to tell you something \u2014 and checking them could be the easiest way (hands down) to spot hidden health problems.<\/p>\n

Meaning \u201clittle moon\u201d in Latin, lunulae are the half-moon shapes at the base of your nails. It\u2019s where new nail cells are made and pushed forward. They\u2019re most prominent on your thumbs and are smaller and less visible as you move out to the pinkies.<\/p>\n

Researchers analyzed studies going back to 1954, when the first research was published on a particular kind of unusual lunulae, to find exactly what the mini-moons can tell us about our health. <\/p>\n

\"ANew research says one nail abnormality could be a warning sign. oreans \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Lunulae are usually white, because the nail is thicker there, obscuring the blood vessels on the nail bed. That said, not everyone has them, and not having lunulae doesn\u2019t indicate you\u2019re unhealthy.<\/p>\n

But when you have lunulae that turn red, it could spell danger. \u201cRed lunulae may reflect both systemic disease activity or local pathology,\u201d the authors wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What reserachers found<\/p>\n

Nails are highly sensitive to health changes in the body. It needs a steady flow of nutrients, oxygen, and blood flow to grow continuously, and changes to any of these will affect the way they grow.<\/p>\n

For example, using GLP-1s has recently show<\/a>n to be associated with discolored and detached nails.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we\u2019re been looking to our nails for so long as indicators of health. Back in that first 1954 report, researchers in London observed 61% of folks examined with red lunulae also had heart failure.<\/p>\n

All the others with red lunulae had some kind of systemic disease like emphysema and chronic bronchitis (both known as COPD), cirrhosis (longterm liver scarring), and cancer, including polycythemia vera (a blood cancer that causes thick, slow moving blood), lymphoma (cancer of white blood cells), and myeloid leukemia (cancer of blood and bone marrow).<\/p>\n

\"AResearchers offered this example of a red lunulae on a 77-year-old man. Christopher G. Karim et al.<\/p>\n

Since then, more research has shown red lunulae are connected with autoimmune conditions like alopecia areata (which causes the hair to fall out in round patches), dermatomyositis (which causes skin rashes and muscle weakness), and systemic lupus erythematosus (aka SLE, which attacks healthy tissue and organs.)<\/p>\n

Author also note connections with congestive heart failure, psoriasis, carbon monoxide poisoning, and lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), a sexually transmitted infection caused by certain variants of the Chlamydia bacteria.<\/p>\n

But exactly why red mini-moons on your nails are connected to any of these conditions \u201cremains unclear,\u201d authors say.<\/p>\n

They do point out though, that the association only exists if multiple fingernails have red lunulae \u2014 if it\u2019s just one, something local like an injury under that nail, is more common.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to note that having a red lunulae doesn\u2019t necessarily mean something\u2019s wrong, just as having white ones doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re perfectly healthy.<\/p>\n

Authors say that the review simply shows support for more investigation if a patient comes in with red lunulae.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the rarity of the occurrence, its potential diagnostic relevance is often overlooked,\u201d write the researchers. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen identifying red lunulae, clinicians should consider connections to underlying systemic or dermatologic disease. This subtle clinical sign may facilitate early detection and identification of salient systemic disease.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your nails might be trying to tell you something \u2014 and checking them could be the easiest way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[687,8006,97,55447,66674,3284],"class_list":["post-877708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-cancer","tag-diseases","tag-health","tag-infections","tag-nails","tag-study-says"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}