Porphyria cutanea tarda (symptomatica) (PCT) is an acquired hepatic porphyria, usually caused, in susceptible people, by liver damage from a high ethanol intake. Clinically, patients have skin fragility, hypertrichosis, photosensitivity and hyperpigmentation, and biochemically there is a high urinary excretion of uroporphyrin, hepatic siderosis, abnormal iron metabolism (Turnbull, Baker, Vernon...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT) is a disorder of porphyrin metabolism associated with decreased activity of uroporphyrinogen decarboxylase (URO-D) in the liver. The relevance of iron in the pathogenesis of PCT is well established: iron overload is one of the factors that trigger the clinical manifestations of the disease and iron depletion remains the cornerstone of thera...

Porphyrinogens were determined in very fresh, diluted morning urine in two types of hepatic porphyria, using a simple and very quick spectrophotometric method. It was shown that acidification by itself is insufficient for the complete conversion of colourless porphyrinogens into porphyrins in photometric determination of porphyrins in diluted urine. A correlation was shown between percentual co...