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Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffYour skin has two types of sweat glands — eccrine glands and apocrine glands:
- Eccrine glands occur over most of your body and open directly onto the surface of your skin. When your core temperature rises, your autonomic nervous system stimulates the eccrine glands to secrete perspiration, which cools you as it evaporates from the surface of your skin.
- Apocrine glands develop in areas abundant in hair follicles, such as your scalp, armpits and groin.
In people with anhidrosis, some — or even most — of the sweat glands stop working, so the body isn't able to cool itself normally. This can happen for many reasons, including:
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Nerve damage. Your autonomic nervous system regulates involuntary actions such as digestion, heartbeat, blood pressure and body temperature. Injuries to your nerves that control this system can affect the functioning of your sweat glands.
Many illnesses can damage your autonomic nerves, including diabetes, alcoholism, Parkinson's disease, amyloidosis — a serious disease that occurs when substances called amyloid proteins build up in your organs — Sjogren's syndrome, which causes dry eyes and mouth, and small cell lung cancer. Anhidrosis is the hallmark of Ross syndrome, a peripheral nerve disorder.
Two rare metabolic disorders, Tangier disease and Fabry's disease, also are associated with anhidrosis. Horner syndrome, which damages nerves in your face and eye, usually causes anhidrosis on the affected side of your face.
- Skin damage. Physical injury to your skin, especially from severe burns, can permanently damage your sweat glands. And certain skin conditions, such as hidradenitis suppurativa, can clog or block your sweat glands, much as an antiperspirant does.
- Certain medications. A number of prescription medications can reduce sweating, especially anticholinergics such as oxybutynin (Ditropan, Oxytrol); tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline and amoxapine; and certain antipsychotic medications, including thioridazine and haloperidol (Haldol). Perspiration usually returns to normal when the medications are stopped.
- Genetic factors. Children with an inherited disorder called hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia are born with few, if any sweat glands. More often, genetic disorders cause normal sweat glands to malfunction.
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Dehydration. This occurs when your body doesn't have enough fluids to carry out its normal functions. In the most serious cases, dehydration can interfere with your ability to sweat. Dehydration is common when you have an intense bout of diarrhea and vomiting, when you have a very high fever, or when you sweat excessively and don't replace lost fluids.
Dehydration can also occur when you have increased urination — often as a result of undiagnosed or uncontrolled diabetes mellitus or diabetes insipidus.
Alcohol and certain medications — diuretics, antihistamines, blood pressure medications and some psychiatric drugs — can cause dehydration as well.
