The UK Health and Security Agency has found that cases of the disease, which has been present in the UK for centuries, have surged by almost half over the last two years alone
Cases of a medieval skin disease caused by a burrowing parasite have nearly doubled in the UK, the nation’s top health monitoring service has found.
Scabies, a skin condition that exploded in the medieval period, notably causing outbreaks in the 14th Century and beyond, appears to be establishing a foothold again, according to the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA). The agency, in a recent report, said that cases have surged since the pandemic, especially over the last two years.
Diagnoses increased by 44 percent between 2023 and 2024 – nearly 1,500 – in a trend that appears to have been fuelled primarily by straight men.
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The UKHSA data shows that, in 2024 alone, 4,872 people were diagnosed with scabies, a jump of 1,479 on the previous year, when the agency recorded 3,393. More than half of the new cases were recorded in “men who have sex with women”, who comprised around 2,500 of the overall caseload.
The category with the next highest caseload were “Gay, Bisexual and other Men who have sex with Men”, who reported just under 1,500 cases. They were followed by “Women who Have sex with Men”, who made up just over 500 of the overall cases.
Scabies is caused by a mite named Sarcoptes scabiei which burrows into the skin, causing intense itching due to an allergic reaction to the parasite and its waste products. The UKHSA explains: “Scabies is a parasitic infection of the skin caused by the Sarcoptes scabiei mite, which buries into the skin and causes intense itching and rashes.”
“Transmission from person to person occurs through close physical contact including, but not exclusively, sexual contact.” Without treatment, infections can last months or up to a year.
Scabies is cured using presciption creams and oral medications, none of which were available to medieval sufferers when cases were at their height in the 14th century. One of the most visceral descriptions of a scabies infection came from Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, who, aged 61, wrote to a fellow poet that he had an “ugly and dry scabies”.
He wrote: “Since five months, this illness oppresses me so much that the hands are prevented to use the pen and to take the food, but they serve only to scratch and scrape it.
“I certainly know only one thing about my illness, that it will soon leave me or I will leave it: we cannot be together for a long time.” Scabies made another global comeback in North America and Europe in the 1960s, with a massive global outbreak persisting until the 1980s.
