Lytic bone lesions and polyarthritis associated with acne fulminans

Skin disorders with arthritis

Many inflammatory, metabolic and infectious diseases affect the skin and joints. Most of these, such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythaematosus, are considered to be rheumatic conditions with secondary skin involvement. However, several primary cutaneous diseases are associated with arthritis and may even present with joint symptoms prior to cutaneous lesions. Common skin disorders, such as acne and psoriasis, have well-known musculoskeletal manifestations. Other less common conditions, such as dermatomyositis, multicentric reticulohistiocytosis, pyoderma gangrenosum, Sweet's syndrome and various cutaneous vasculitides, also have frequent joint involvement. This review will discuss the clinical presentation, both cutaneous and musculoskeletal, diagnosis and management of these disorders.

Acne fulminans with synovitis-acne-pustulosis-hyperostosis-osteitis (SAPHO) syndrome treated with infliximab

Acne fulminans is a syndrome of sudden onset hemorrhagic and ulcerative acne involving the back, chest, and face combined with systemic symptoms. It can be the dermatologic manifestation of the synovitis-acne-pustulosis-hyperostosis-osteitis (SAPHO) syndrome. Current therapy for acne fulminans consists of wound care, topical and systemic corticosteroids, isotretinoin, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Infliximab, a recently developed monoclonal antibody against tumor necrosis factor-alfa, has shown efficacy in the treatment of psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis both of which share clinical similarities to the SAPHO syndrome. We report the case of a patient with the SAPHO syndrome and acne fulminans who was treated with infliximab. Ten months after initiating therapy with infliximab, the area of the patient's ulcerative lesions was reduced by 70%. Infliximab might be considered as a treatment option for patients with acne fulminans unresponsive to conventional therapies.

Pyogenic arthritis, pyoderma gangrenosum, and acne syndrome maps to chromosome 15q

Pyoderma gangrenosum, cystic acne, and aseptic arthritis are clinically distinct disorders within the broad class of inflammatory diseases. Although this triad of symptoms is rarely observed in a single patient, a three-generation kindred with autosomal-dominant transmission of these three disorders has been reported as "PAPA syndrome" (MIM 604416). We report mapping of a disease locus for familial pyoderma gangrenosum-acne-arthritis to the long arm of chromosome 15 (maximum two-point LOD score, 5.83; recombination fraction [straight theta] 0 at locus D15S206). Under the assumption of complete penetrance, haplotype analysis of recombination events defined a disease interval of 10 cM, between D15S1023 and D15S979. Successful identification of a single disease locus for this syndrome suggests that these clinically distinct disorders may share a genetic etiology. These data further indicate the role of genes outside the major histocompatibility locus in inflammatory disease.