[Influence of anxiety in diverse cutaneous diseases]. / Influencia de la ansiedad en diversas patologías dermatológicas.

INTRODUCTION: The objective of the current study is to determine the levels of anxiety in patients with dermatological diseases compared to healthy subjects and the degree of anxiety in the different cutaneous diseases. MATERIAL AND METHODS: It is a descriptive study of a case series where 152 patients are selected, 20 of whom are healthy controls and the other 132 are patients that attend a Dermatology clinic. The patients are divided into 5 groups based on the cutaneous disorder for which they attend the clinic: chronic urticaria, acute urticaria, plaque psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and a miscellaneous group (includes several diagnoses such as seborrheic keratosis, follow-up of multiple nevi, carcinomas...) where, a priori, anxiety does not influence these disorders. Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is administered to the participating subjects and the differences in State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) and Trait Anxiety Inventory (TAI) for the different groups are analyzed. Patients were asked to report any stressful event in the six months prior to the appearance of the disease that might have been a trigger, and they were also asked about history of psychiatric disorders or atopy. RESULTS: We observed significant differences in the means obtained in SAI and TAI in healthy subjects compared to patients. We obtained higher mean scores in SAI in patients diagnosed of atopic dermatitis, that were significant when compared with patients with chronic urticaria or other diseases. Forty-eight percent of patients with psoriasis and 38.89 % of patients with atopic dermatitis report a stressful event in the past six months compared to 11.54% of patients from the group with miscellaneous diseases and, additionally, patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis have the highest mean scores in the anxiety tests. Twenty-one percent of the 132 patients with cutaneous diseases report a history of psychiatric disorders, showing statistically significant higher mean scores in STAI. CONCLUSION: The findings show the comorbidity of psychiatric disorders in patients with chronic cutaneous diseases and the high levels of state and trait anxiety, mainly in patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.

Neutrophilic eccrine hidradenitis--a report of two additional cases.

Neutrophilic eccrine hidradenitis is a new neutrophilic dermatosis recently reported in association with acute myelogenous leukaemia and other malignancies, usually occurring during chemotherapy. The authors report two new cases, one of which was a patient with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia who had been treated with chlorambucil for 2 years. The clinical and histopathological features of the published cases are reviewed and the possible pathogenesis of this new syndrome is discussed.

[Porphyrin excretion in normal (author's transl)]. / Excreción de porfirinas en individuos normales.

Porphyrin excretion in normal subjects was studied by solvent extraction procedures and by thin-layer chromatography of their methyl-esters. The mean value of the urinary coproporphyrin fraction was significantly higher in males than in females. Taking age also into account this difference was not significant in subjects under 20 years of age. Within the same sex, age did not have any influence on this coproporphyrin fraction. Neither of these two factors, i.e. sex and age modified the mean values of uroporphyrin fraction. Males and females showed similar amounts of fecal copro and protoporphyrin fractions. The thin-layer chromatographic urinary pattern revealed a minor porcentual value of octo-carboxylic-porphyrin in males, due mainly to a lower amount of porphyrin in the 20-40 year, period, when males also showed a decreased value of heptacarboxylic-porphyrin. Neither sex nor age modified the fecal chromatographic porphyrin pattern. Di-carboxylic porphyrins were always predominant, but theri appraisal was very frequently interfered by the presence in feces of fluorescent substances with a Rf similar to tri-carboxylic-porphyrin but with a pheophytinlike spectra.

Two cases in infantile and familial porphyria cutanea tarda.

In 2 children, both 7 years old, and with an obvious presence of clinical symptoms, the diagnosis of porphyria cutanea tarda was corroborated by the characteristic patterns of urinary and fecal prophyrin excretion. Familial studies allowed us to consider both cases as hereditary.