Eruptive pseudoangiomatosis: report of an adult case and unifying hypothesis of the pathogenesis of paediatric and adult cases.

One month after the onset of immunosuppressive treatment with corticosteroids and mycophenolate mofetil for a newly diagnosed pemphigus vulgaris, a 50-year-old female patient developed a new eruption clinically and histomorphologically consistent with eruptive pseudoangiomatosis (EP). Its self-limited course further confirmed this diagnosis. Although initially described as a paediatric eruption, meanwhile more adult cases of EP (30 out of a total of 53 cases identified by a Medline search) are reported in the literature. The review of adult cases of EP disclosed some common clinical and epidemiological characteristics: adult EP cases tend to cluster in the Mediterranean region of Europe, develop during the summer months, sometimes in the form of limited micro-epidemics, affect immunocompromised individuals and have lesions confined to the exposed skin sites. These characteristics, together with the exanthematic nature of the disease in children, point to some vector-transmitted infectious agent as the cause of this probably underdiagnosed disease. 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel