What's already known about this topic?

• Dermoscopy enhances the diagnostic accuracy for melanoma and dramatically decreases the number need to treat ratio when used by properly trained dermatologists.
• Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) is a novel technique that provides a significant improvement in melanoma detection.

What does this study add?

• The addition of RCM to dermoscopy has a significant impact on the number of dermoscopically equivocal pigmented lesions excised for every melanoma, reducing the excision of benign lesions.

What's already known about this topic?

• Nonablative therapeutic modalities are licensed for the management of superficial basal cell carcinomas (sBCC).
• Few data are available concerning utility of dermoscopy in the evaluation of sBCCs after nonablative therapies.

What does this study add?

• The current study suggests the usefulness of dermoscopy in the assessment of treatment outcome and monitoring of sBCCs.
• Based on dermoscopy, physicians may avoid post-treatment diagnostic biopsies, or overtreatment, which increase patients' morbidity and therapeutic cost.

What's already known about this topic?

• Lymphocytic infiltrates in the leading edge of vitiligo lesions are considered as markers of disease progression.

What does this study add?

• The immunostaining of NLRP1 and interleukin-1β in perilesional lesions of progressive vitiligo adds significant information with regard to lymphocytic infiltrates and may be useful for making clinical decisions (such as performing surgery).

What's already known about this topic?

• Psychological stress can be a risk factor for maintenance and exacerbation of chronic inflammatory conditions, such as psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
• It is not yet fully known whether patients with various chronic inflammatory conditions show distinct physiological stress response patterns.

What does this study add?

• This is the first study to compare the psychophysiological stress response of patients with psoriasis, patients with RA and healthy controls.
• Patients with psoriasis show a heightened cortisol response to an experimentally induced real-life stressor compared with patients with RA and controls.

What's already known about this topic?

• Breslow thickness is the single most important predictor of survival in localized malignant melanoma.
• Breslow thickness and melanoma susceptibility share common host risk factors.

What does this study add?

• Breslow thickness was associated with age and presence of naevi.
• There may be some evidence of shared genetic determinants between Breslow thickness and melanoma susceptibility.

What's already known about this topic?

• Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is characterized by severe skin rash, fever, haematological abnormalities and internal organ involvement.

What does this study add?

• On histopathological examination, epidermal spongiosis, severe dyskeratosis and interface vacuolization were more commonly noted in DRESS than in maculopapular exanthema (MPE).
• Severe dyskeratosis, observed in DRESS, may correlate with a greater extent of systemic involvement compared with that noted in MPE.

What's already known about this topic?

• Rosacea is a common skin disease of largely unknown aetiology.
• Despite scarce evidence, the onset of rosacea has been attributed to psychogenic causes.
• The impact of psychotropic drugs on rosacea remains uninvestigated.

What does this study add?

• This large primary care-based observational study suggests no material association between depression or other affective disorders and the risk of developing rosacea.
• Patients with schizophrenia might be at a decreased risk of rosacea, but diagnostic bias cannot be ruled out.
• Our data suggest a substantially decreased rosacea risk for patients with chronic systemic lithium exposure.

What's already known about this topic?

• Lichen simplex chronicus (LSC) is a common skin disorder characterized by skin lichenification following excessive scratching.
• LSC is not a life-threatening disease, but it can result in psychosocial problems and impair quality of life through sleep disturbance and sexual dysfunction.

What does this study add?

• This study demonstrates that people with anxiety, especially those aged < 40 years, are at an increased risk of having LSC. Psychological factors were found to contribute to LSC.
• We recommend combining the management of LSC and psychological disorders to achieve favourable outcomes.

What's already known about this topic?

• Paediatric morphoea has an unpredictable disease course with self-limited mild disease in some children and unremitting severely disfiguring disease in others.

What does this study add?

• Linear morphoea and age of onset < 10 years of age are significantly associated with extracutaneous manifestations.
• Children with linear morphoea and onset of disease prior to 10 years of age should be treated with systemic therapy to prevent neurological and joint complications.

What's already known about this topic?

• Infantile haemangiomas (IHs), although often inconsequential, may cause significant disability or disfigurement.
• An association with aberrant placental or vascular stem cells has been hypothesized.
• The reported incidence varies widely, and complication rates as high as 20% have been documented.

What does this study add?

• This is the first prospective U.S. study to document the incidence and demographics of IH in infants evaluated from birth.
• The incidence and risk of complications appear lower than previously reported.
• A statistically significant association with placental anomalies was identified.

What's already known about this topic?

• Skin barrier breakdown is a key event in the development of atopic dermatitis (AD).
• Prolonged use of potent or moderately potent topical corticosteroids (TCS) disrupts the structure of the skin barrier, thins the stratum corneum (SC) and as a result reduces permeability barrier function.
• The effect of topical calcineurin inhibitors (TCI) on the skin barrier is still unclear.

What does this study add?

• In subjects with quiescent AD, application of betamethasone valerate reduced skin barrier function, SC integrity and natural moisturizing factor (NMF) levels towards the level of the subclinical barrier defect observed in active disease at nonlesional sites.
• By comparison, a topical formulation containing tacrolimus preserved barrier function, SC integrity and NMF levels.
• This raises the importance of better understanding how to combine TCS and TCI to optimize effects on the skin barrier.

What's already known about this topic?

• High frequent production of antidrug antibodies (ADAs) has been observed in patients treated with biologics, and the production has caused impairment of treatment efficacy.

What does this study add?

• The optimal use of the biologics should be determined by the measurement of ADAs and each drug concentration in each patient because the standard protocol may not uniformly fit all patients.

What's already known about this topic?

• Beta-blockers have potential antiangiogenic and antimigratory activity in both human cancer cell lines and animal models.
• Two epidemiological studies have demonstrated a survival benefit in patients with malignant melanoma treated with beta-blockers.
• A more recent study of patients with malignant melanoma showed no association between beta-blocker use and all-cause mortality (which could reflect cardiovascular mortality), but did not investigate melanoma-specific mortality.

What does this study add?

• This U.K. population-based linkage study did not show an association between postdiagnostic beta-blocker usage and melanoma-specific (or all-cause) mortality.

What's already known about this topic?

• A series of cases of symmetrical acral keratoderma have been described recently in China.
• However, no studies of demographic information and epidermal permeability barrier function have been documented.

What does this study add?

• Symmetrical acral keratoderma is characterized by symmetry, acra, keratinization and marked seasonal changes.
• The epidermal barrier function of the skin was negatively affected.

What's already known about this topic?

• Better therapeutic or preventive regimens for chemotherapy-induced alopecia are urgently needed.
• Because α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH) can counteract genotoxic and oxidative stress induced by ultraviolet light we investigated if this peptide is cytoprotective in an in vitro model of chemotherapy-induced hair dystrophy.

What does this study add?

• α-MSH reduced 4-hydroperoxy-cyclophosphamide-induced apoptosis and disruption of pigmentation in organ-cultured hair follicles of some patients.
• These effects of α-MSH were associated with increased haem oxygenase-1 expression.

What's already known about this topic?

• Postexcisional repigmentation associated with recurrent naevus is recognized as remaining confined within the scar of the initial biopsy.

What does this study add?

• This is the largest series of cases formally describing the distinct clinical finding of postexcisional melanocytic regrowth within and extending beyond the confines of the previous excisional scar as an indicator of the development of early malignant melanoma.