Woringer-Kolopp disease

History: Frederic Woringer (1903-1964) and Woringer-Kolopp disease

The two most famous dermatologic eponyms born in Strasbourg are Pautrier microabscess and Woringer-Kolopp disease. Frederic Woringer (1903-1964) was one of Pautrier's students, who had been in charge of the Laboratoire d'Histopathologie Cutanée in Strasbourg from 1930 until his death. He achieved a brilliant career in the field of dermatopathology and was very active during the great period between World War I and II. His name is linked to a rare disease, pagetoid reticulosis, which he actually misunderstood, as he was at first convinced that the characteristic intraepidermal changes were due to Paget cells. In this article, we show for the first time the original correspondence between Kolopp (who sent the case to Strasbourg) and Woringer, including discussion with masters such as Pautrier and Civatte. Civatte suggested that these mysterious intraepidermal cells might have common morphologic features with the recently described Sezary cells. After the first publication of pagetoid reticulosis, it took almost 40 years to establish a clear link with mycosis fungoides. It was Braun Falco who named the disease after Woringer and Kolopp in 1974. Woringer would certainly be surprised to know that his name is still world famous, thanks to a rare disease he was the first to extensively describe in 1939, a few days before the declaration of war.

Disseminated pagetoid reticulosis: plaques and tumoral lesions occurring simultaneously in the same patient

Disseminated pagetoid reticulosis is considered to have a poor prognosis. Some authors regard this disease as an epidermotropic type of mycosis fungoides rather than a distinct entity. We report the case of an 83-year-old woman with disseminated pagetoid reticulosis who subsequently developed tumoral lesions and died soon after the appearance of these tumours. Our case is in agreement with findings that disseminated pagetoid reticulosis has an aggressive clinical behaviour.

Pagetoid reticulosis (Woringer-Kolopp disease). An ultrastructural and immunocytological study

Histopathological, immunocytological and ultrastructural observations are reported in the first case of pagetoid reticulosis (Woringer-Kolopp disease) in Japan. The patient was a 61-year-old woman with multiple skin lesions running a chronic and apparently benign clinical course. Histology of the skin biopsies revealed typical pagetoid appearance of the epidermis due to intraepidermal infiltration of abnormal cells. Ultrastructural investigation showed that the intraepidermal abnormal cells were classified into mycosis fungoides cells, Sézary cells, lymphoblast-like cells, and large blastoid cells and that the mycosis fungoides cells were a major cell population. Intermediate or transitional cells were found between these cells and large blastoid cells were mostly situated in the basal cell layer. By the rosetting assays of the free cell suspensions prepared from the epidermis of the biopsied skin lesions, 93% of the suspended cells were positive for spontaneous rosette formation with sheep erythrocytes. The immunoperoxidase technique demonstrated no cytoplasmic immunoglobulins in almost all the intraepidermal abnormal cells. These results indicate that the intraepidermal abnormal cells are T-lymphocytes. Thus, it is concluded that the present case is a cutaneous T-cell lymphoma of low-grade malignancy showing a prominent epidermotropism. This case is the first description of the disease in Japan.