Itchy skin

is an effect caused by failing the Toughness save caused by contact with fungal spores from a broodpuff or a creature infected with.

This effect develops into a fungal infection after 2-3 days (2400 - 3600 turns)..

While this effect is active, the player will periodically see the message "Your skin itches." in the message log.

Prevention

 * Cooking effects that grant a "75% chance that itchy skin doesn't develop into a fungal infection" (such as Mulled Mushroom Cider or a custom recipe containing the  or ) will work only if the cooking effect was present before the itchy skin effect was first applied. This cooking buff has no effect on existing instances of.

Removal

 * Cooking with and  can yield one of two fairly reliable recipes to remove itchy skin. This is subject to random chance, but the Carbide Chef skill and the inspired buff should nearly guarantee your chances of getting one of the desired recipes with the effect "...you are immune to fungal spores for 6 hours."
 * may apparently also be substituted as a cooking ingredient.
 * Cooking effects that grant a triggered effect of "...one of your negative status effects is removed at random" or "...all of your negative status effects are removed" can remove an existing effect. You can potentially gain one of these cooking effects by cooking with, , or . You'll need to combine one of those ingredients with at least one other ingredient, and the metabolized effect gained by cooking may or may not be the one that can remove negative status effects.
 * The physical debuff-removing effect of the Regeneration mutation can remove the effect, and it will almost certainly do so before it can develop into a fungal infection, even at mutation level 1.

Things That Don't Work
Drinking or eating  has no interaction with  because a fungal infection is not considered an illness. They do not prevent it, and they will not reduce the chances of it turning into a fungal infection. For this reason, recipes that cure incubating illnesses also have no effect.