Cronkhite-Canada syndrome is a rare disease characterised by diffuse polyposis of the gastrointestinal tract, diarrhoea, weight loss, abdominal pain, cutaneous hyperpigmentation, dystrophic changes of fingernails, and alopecia. The etiology is probably autoimmune and diagnosis is based on history, physical examination, endoscopic findings of gastrointestinal polyposis, and histology. The diseas...

Hereditary hemochromatosis is an autosomal recessive disorder that disturbs iron metabolism and results in iron deposition throughout the body. Iron accumulation in various organs may cause a wide range of systemic symptoms and cutaneous manifestations of the disease are particularly striking. Classically, hereditary hemochromatosis has been termed "bronze diabetes." Although diffuse hyperpigme...

E20 CUTIS WWW.CUTIS.COM To the Editor: Serpentine supravenous hyperpigmentation (SSH) is a rare phenomenon characterized by linear hyperpigmentation of the skin overlying veins secondary to intravenous antineoplastic therapy. The term was first suggested by Hrushesky1 in 1976 as an uncommon side effect of administering intravenous 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). Although 5-FU is the most frequent offend...

superficial dermis with occasional melanophages (Figure 3). The patient continued to receive cycles of chemotherapy, with no observed increase in pigmentation, until completing the treatment after 11 infusions. Five months after the last cycle of chemotherapy and 8 months after the appearance of the hyperpigmentation, no pigmentation was seen on the palms of the hands, and the reticular pigment...

circumscribed annular patch with multiple follicular papules. Unlike classical CSMH, there is no hyperpigmentation and the hair pattern changes are less prominent (4). There have also been reports of patients with multiple CSMH (5). Diffuse CSMH has been described as part of the Michelintyre-baby syndrome (6). This syndrome is characterized by a combination of anomalies, such as ringed skin cre...

Pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD, Doxil, Caelyx) is widely used for the treatment of ovarian cancer. It is a stable formulation encapsulating doxorubicin in a 'Stealth' (i.e., pegylated) liposome with a half-life of about 72 hours. This drastically altered pharmacology confers on it a considerably lower risk of cardiotoxicity, no acute emesis, and near absence of alopecia or problems with e...

Drug-induced reticulate hyperpigmentation is uncommon. Including the patient described in this report, chemotherapy-associated reticulate hyperpigmentation has only been described in ten individuals. This paper describes the features of a woman with recurrent and metastatic breast cancer who developed paclitaxel-induced reticulate hyperpigmentation and reviews the characteristics of other oncol...