Photo(chemo)therapy for Vitiligo

Vitiligo is a skin disease having an impact on the quality of life. Phototherapy or photochemotherapy are the first-line treatment choices in generalized vitiligo and are among the most effective treatment modalities either alone or in combination with other therapies. Treatment methods with ultraviolet include oral / topical psoralen plus UVA (PUVA), psoralen plus sunlight (PUVAsol), UVA, broadband UVB, narrowband UVB, excimer laser, monochromatic excimer light and sunlight. This review focuses on the modalities, principals and studies of UV treatment in vitiligo

Benign skin tumors in association with systemic malignancy

There are various types of benign skin tumors in association with the complex nature of the skin. A minor part of them may be associated with visceral malignancies. This review focuses on the benign skin tumors that are described to have well-known associations with systemic malignancies or those with controversial associations. These tumors and the associated conditions are as follows: seborrheic keratosis/ Leser-Trelat sign, lentigo simplex/Peutz Jeghers and Carney syndrome, sebaceous tumors/ Muir-Torre syndrome, fibrofolliculoma- trichodiskoma/ Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome, trichoepitheliomacylindroma-spiradenoma/ Brooke-Spiegler syndrome, leiomyoma/multiple cutaneous and uterin leiomyomatosis syndrome, glomeruloid hemangioma/ POEMS syndrome, venous malformation/ Maffucci syndrome, mucosal neuroma/ multiple endocrine neoplasia type 28, juvenile xanthogranuloma/ juvenile chronic myeloid leukemia. It is important to know the skin tumors related with visceral malignancies in part of a syndrome or in association with a sign as this may yield an earlier recognition of these malignancies

Childhood pemphigus vulgaris: five cases in 16 years

Pemphigus vulgaris (PV) usually occurs in adults. There are only a few reports of large PV series concerning childhood cases. We report here five cases of PV in patients younger than 16 years. They were analyzed among 169 PV cases out of a total of 192 pemphigus patients diagnosed between 1988-2004. The ratio of childhood cases was 2.9% in our large PV series. This relatively high ratio of childhood patients suggests that PV should not be neglected in the differential diagnosis of bullous lesions in childhood. Four of the five cases were followed up between 2-4 years and all of these four cases showed at least one relapse. PV also seems to show a relapsing course in the pediatric age group like in adults