Cutaneous leiomyosarcoma with myxoid alteration arising in a setting of multiple cutaneous smooth muscle neoplasms.

Background: Cutaneous leiomyomas and leiomyosarcomas are rare tumors that originate from the arrector muscle of hair follicles or the smooth muscle of blood vessels.

Case Report: A 74-year-old male presented with a single, erythematous nodule on the left upper arm. This lesion developed within the excision scar of a piloleiomyoma that had been excised 3 years ago.

[Angioma serpiginosum following the lines of Blaschko--an effective treatment with the IPL technology].

Angioma serpiginosum, first described by Hutchinson in 1889, is a rare benign vascular nevus with dilatation and proliferation of the capillaries in the upper dermis. A 15-year-old boy presented with an angioma serpiginosum on the right side of the body following the lines of Blaschko. Both the clinical pattern and the appearance in a male are unusual.

Functional characterization of the epidermal cholinergic system in vitro.

The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of cholinergic and anticholinergic drugs on epidermal physiology using organotypic cocultures (OTCs). Blocking of all acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) by combined treatment with mecamylamine and atropine or treatment with strychnine (blocking alpha9nAChR) for 7-14 days resulted in a complete inhibition of epidermal differentiation and proliferation. Blockage of nicotinic (n)AChR with mecamylamine led to a less pronounced delay in epidermal differentiation and proliferation than blockage of muscarinic (m)AChR with atropine, evidenced by reduced epithelial thickness and expression of terminal differentiation markers like cytokeratin 2e or filaggrin.

Paucity of FOXP3+ cells in skin and peripheral blood distinguishes Sézary syndrome from other cutaneous T-cell lymphomas.

Cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCL) are mainly comprised of two variants: mycosis fungoides (MF) with CD4(+) tumor cells confined to the skin and the leukemic Sézary syndrome with tumor cell spread to the blood. In this study, we investigated cutaneous expression of the regulatory T-cell (T(reg)) marker FOXP3 in 30 CTCL patients. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed significantly lower numbers of CD4(+)FOXP3(+) cells within the dermal lymphomononuclear infiltrate of Sézary patients (16% FOXP3(+) cells of CD4(+) cells) in contrast to MF (43% FOXP3(+) cells (P<0.