Detection of silver sulfide deposits in the skin of patients with argyria after long-term use of silver-containing drugs.

Five patients with generalized slate-gray discoloration of the skin have been diagnosed histologically as argyria in the last 35 years in the Department of Dermatology and Venereology of Rostock and Halle. Light microscopically, there was visible black pigmentation in histiocytes, fibroblasts, and multinucleated giant cells of the dermis. In the transmission electron microscope (TEM), the authors observed electron-dense deposits inside lysosomes and residual bodies of phagocytes as well as outside the cells in the connective matrix. These deposits were identified by elemental analysis in TEM and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) as well as scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDX) containing silver and sulfur. Therefore, they seem to consist of silver sulfide. Argyria is of low medical relevance and is very rarely induced because of silver-containing drugs. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of silver products on the market, easily available over-the-counter. Therefore, argyria should not be forgotten or missed in the diagnostics of human dermis.

Chronic inflammation and pain inside the mandibular jaw and a 10-year forgotten amalgam filling in an alveolar cavity of an extracted molar tooth.

A 55-year-old woman, suffered from severe pain in her mandibular jaw for several years. A metallic artifact of about 2(3) mm was detected by a panorama radiography in an edentulous region with a surrounding inflammation in close contact to the canal of the mandibular nerve. Inflammated tissue with the central metallic inclusion was removed from the bone under local anesthesia and operation. Postoperatively, pain and missensitivity disappeared within 1 week. Although the patient had no macroscopically visible so-called amalgam tattoo, the metallic cube was identified as amalgam by the detection of mercury, silver, tin, copper, and zinc using energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Nevertheless, brown to black pigments in the connective tissue matrix and inside histiocytes, fibroblasts, and multinucleated foreign giant cells of the surrounding inflammatory tissue were observed by light and electron microscopy. However, the elemental analysis by EDX in SEM or by electron energy loss spectroscopy in transmission electron microscope detected only silver, tin, and sulfur but no mercury in these precipitates and in the residual bodies of phagocytes. The presented case demonstrates a seldom complication of amalgam deposition in the tissue. The authors assume that the chronic pain results from a forgotten amalgam filling inside an alveole after extraction of a molar tooth, causing a chronic inflammation by resolving mercury and other toxic elements out of the metallic artifact.