A case of acantholytic dermatosis and leukemia cutis: cause or effect?

Leukemia cutis is capable of presenting in a variety of clinical and histologic guises. We describe a 75-year-old man with a recent diagnosis of M0 acute myelogenous leukemia, who presented with multiple pruritic erythematous papules on his chest and back. Microscopically, the epidermis showed acrosyringeal-based acantholysis consistent with transient acantholytic dermatosis (TAD), associated with exocytosis of atypical hematolymphoid cells.