A red herring colonization of in cutaneous sporotrichosis lesions misleading the diagnosis.

A 42-year-old man presented with a sporotrichoid lymphocutaneous infection for 1 month. The histopathology of the lesions showed numerous intracellular mycobacteria within foamy histiocytes suggestive of nontuberculous mycobacteria and misled the empiric treatment. The final culture grew spp.

Open-label study of valacyclovir 1.5 g twice daily for the treatment of uncomplicated herpes zoster in immunocompetent patients 18 years of age or older.

Background: Herpes zoster (shingles) is a common disease caused by a reactivation of the latent varicella-zoster virus (chickenpox), which resides in the dorsal root ganglia. Valacyclovir HCl, the L-valyl ester of acyclovir, is an antiviral drug that is used to accelerate the resolution of the herpes zoster rash and associated pain and reduce the duration of postherpetic neuralgia.

Objective: To demonstrate the safety and efficacy of oral valacyclovir 1.

Pigmentary changes and atopic dermatitis in a patient with Seckel syndrome.

Seckel syndrome is a very rare form of primordial dwarfism characterized by antenatal and postnatal growth delay, proportionate extreme short stature, a prominent beak-like nose, hypoplasia of the malar area, small chin, microcephaly, deformed ears lacking lobules, skeletal malformations, mental retardation, and developmental delay. This syndrome has been described with associated disorders of orthopedic, neurologic, hematologic, cardiac, and ocular systems; however, only a few reports mention dermatologic involvement. We describe a 5-year-old girl with classic Seckel syndrome who presented with moderately severe atopic dermatitis and diffuse hypopigmented macules and papules.

Molecular diagnosis of cutaneous diseases.

Objectives: To provide an update on the molecular procedures used increasingly in the study and diagnosis of a variety of dermatologic malignancies and inflammatory disorders and to explore the potential use of these techniques in clinical dermatology. Herein, we review assays such as G-banding, fluorescence in situ hybridization, comparative genomic hybridization, and spectral karyotyping in conjunction with the polymerase chain reaction and DNA microarrays.

Data Sources: PubMed was searched for published articles on molecular diagnosis and dermatologic diseases.

Regulation of steroid hormone biosynthesis in R2C and MA-10 Leydig tumor cells: role of the cholesterol transfer proteins StAR and PBR.

The MA-10 mouse Leydig tumor cell line produces large amounts of steroids only in response to hormonal stimulation while the R2C rat Leydig tumor cell line is constitutively steroidogenic in nature. In an effort to uncover the potential reasons for constitutive steroidogenesis in R2C cells, we have recently shown that compared to MA-10 cells, R2C cells express much higher levels of the Scavenger Receptor Class B type 1 which results in a higher capacity for cholesteryl ester uptake through the selective uptake pathway. We also found an enhanced expression of Hormone Sensitive Lipase and the Steroidogenic Acute Regulatory protein in these cells and reasoned that they may further facilitate the conversion of cholesteryl esters to free cholesterol and its mobilization to the inner mitochondrial membrane, thus rendering them constitutively steroidogenic.