P.S. In response to your call for information from fellow PD patients, my husband is slightly more prone to skin infections than before he was diagnosed with PD. No foot infections, no nail infections; just the occasional small boil in random locations around the body which subsides and disappears after we treat it with a commercial manuka honey foot and heel cream for a few days. I know of only one such cream; the company's initials are D.O. Another effective preparation we have used is epsom salt paste; it caused the lesions to drain and then to heal. However, it was more drying to the skin than the manuka honey cream, so we prefer the latter.

In my husband's case, an indirect indication that the etiology is fungal is his response to (15-minute) sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) foot baths. We add about 1/4 cup of baking soda to a small tub of warm water of a suitable size for soaking the feet. He feels better the day after a soda foot bath. And, if we continue these daily for a week, he feels fantastic, clearer in mind and more coordinated physically. Bicarb is an excellent antifungal, as I'm sure you know. In my husband's recent lab work, his bicarbonate was a smidge low, just below the bottom of the normal range. If his PD is fungal, I would expect that his body is drawing on its bicarb supply to fight the fungus. The pancreas secretes less bicarbonate after age 45, so his low bicarb level doesn't surprise me. It's just another reason to continue the foot baths. I call them "spa treatments," and he feels extremely pampered by them.