Strawberry in past has been mentioned in medicinal uses. This garden fruit is eponymoous to several important clinical signs in medicine. The list below is not a new one but a recompilation.
Strawberry tongue: Surface of the tongue is coated with a thick white fur, through which protrude bright red papillae (hyperplastic fungiform papillae).
- Scarlet fever
- Kawasaki disease
- Toxic shock syndrome
Strawberry gums (gingivitis): Reddish-purple exophytic gingival swellings with petechial haemorrhages thus resembling strawberries
- Most characteristic oral lesion of Wegner’s granulomatosis
Strawberry skull: Flattening of occiput and pointing of frontal bones giving resemblance to a shape of strawberry in antenatal ultrasonography.
- Trisomy 18 (Edward’s syndrome)
Strawberry hemangioma or nevus: Bright red and sticks out of the skin, so it does look a little bit like a strawberry.
- Superficial infantile hemangioma (Capillary hemangioma)
Strawberry-like mullbery mass in nose: Friable, vascular polyp, which may be pedunculated or sessile and the surface is studded with tiny white dots from spores beneath the epithelium.
- Rhinosporidiosis
Strawberry skin (Strawberry like nasal mucosa): Tiny pale granulomas dotted about on the reddened mucosa.
- Sarcoidosis
Strawberry gallbladder: Brick red mucosa of gallbladder speckled with bright yellow nodules (lipid and cholesterol).
- Cholesterosis of gallbladder
Strawberry cervix: Microscopic, multiple punctate haemorrhages of the cervix.
- Trichomoniasis (Trichomonas vaginalis)
Strawberry lesions in sigmoidoscopy: Borrelia vincenti
Is strawberry still your favorite fruit? Please comment below.
When will someone explain “strawberry” in a baseball context? If a player slid into the base, he would often develop a “strawberry” on his upper thigh or lower buttock….especially if he wasn’t wearing sliding pads. Obviously, the injury was an abrasion, but it often developed into something more like a wart or mole, with a distinctive strawberry-like (or raspberry) surface and colour.
I’ve searched Google, without success. Ask any baseball player older than 60 and you will learn about strawberries. Yesterday, 30 July/23, on the TV broadcast of the Toronto Blue Jays/California Angels game, announcer Buck Martinez (who has been around baseball for 65 years) used the term after Mark Chapman had slid (slidden?) into 3rd base.