Monday, May 21, 2012

Algae

A 50 year old patient with hepatitis C presents with the rash shown above. It also affects the wrists, elbows, nails, and oral mucosa. Note that the rash is somewhat shiny and flat. The lesions are itchy.

A biopsy is shown below:

Challenge: What's your diagnosis?

First and third images shown under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License; second image shown under Fair Use.

1 comment:

Craig said...

Algae

Lichen planus is shown here; the second image shows a thick, violaceous, hyperkeratotic plaque with a white lacelike pattern called Wickham’s striae. Histopathology shows an interface dermatitis with apoptotic keratinocytes at the dermal-epidermal junction and an underlying lymphocytic infiltrate.

Sources: UpToDate; Wikipedia.