The challenge of diagnosing atypical exanthems: a clinico-laboratory study.

Background: Although atypical exanthems pose a severe diagnostic challenge, they have not been studied widely.

Objective: To identify the clinical features, laboratory parameters and other characteristics that help establish the etiology of atypical exanthems.

Methods: We collected the following information from 260 consecutive patients with atypical exanthems, including 108 children and 152 adults: demographic data, exanthem and enanthem morphology, clinical symptoms, month of outbreak and total duration.

Assessing the reliability of the Modified Wash Test.

Aim: The aim of this paper was to find a simple method to evaluate reliably diagnosis and severity of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) and telogen effluvium (TE).

Methods: We adopted the modified wash test (MWT), which accomplishes such task through assessing the number of shed hair and the vellus percentage. To evaluate its reliability, 25 subjects were submitted to MWT once a week for 4 consecutive weeks according to the procedure published elsewhere.

Polymorphous light eruption and benign summer light eruption in Italy.

Background/purpose: Polymorphous light eruption (PLE) heterogeneity has been postulated, but the existence of benign summer light eruption (BSLE) is controversial. We studied the prevalence of the clinical patterns, criteria distinguishing BSLE from PLE, and diagnostic usefulness of phototest.

Methods: Five Italian Photodermatology Centres recruited retrospectively 346 patients with typical clinical history and/or presentation of PLE.

The quality of life in Italian psoriatic patients treated with biological drugs.

Aim: Psoriasis is well known to affect negatively daily activities, occupational and sexual functioning. We investigated whether the improvement of skin lesions obtained with the new biological drugs comes with by a better Quality of Life (QoL) as well.

Methods: Thirty patients with moderate to severe psoriasis treated with either anti-CD11 (13) or anti-TNF-α molecules (17) were studied.

Proteomic-based screening of miRNAs metabolic pathway targeting.

The analysis of miRNA expression profile is powerful support to screen new disease biomarkers. One miRNA can control the expression of several different protein mRNAs. Lack of knowledge about the process of target recognition is a weak point in the development of reliable computational tools for miRNA target selection.