Dr Agnes Savill: Pioneer, polymath and dermatology's renaissance woman.

Dr Agnes Savill was the UK's first female consultant dermatologist with a career journey which was, by any standards, extraordinary. She was awarded her MA in 1893 making her the first female graduate from St Andrews University. She then trained as a doctor in Glasgow in the earliest cohort of women granted the opportunity to study medicine. Following qualification, and during her early professional years, she maintained an involvement in the women's suffrage movement by publicly indicting the government for its brutal treatment of women suffrage prisoners in the 'Votes for Women' campaign. During World War 1 Dr Agnes Savill was one of a handful of women doctors who served at the Scottish Women's Hospital, a combat hospital in France. Dr Savill worked as the radiologist for the unit and developed expertise in the radiographic appearances of gas gangrene. After the war she returned to her dermatology practice, becoming the UK's leading expert in disorders of the hair and scalp and publishing widely on the subject. However, Agnes Savill had interests which extended into the humanities, particularly music. She was advocate for the use of music as treatment for psychological and physical disorders and wrote a book on this subject which helped promote music therapy as a para-clinical discipline. In her latter years she became fascinated by the history of classical antiquity and, at the age of 79, published a biography of Alexander the Great, an account praised for being both lucid and authoritative. Agnes Savill was a remarkable pioneering doctor: she was a ground-breaking dermatologist, she fought for women's rights and served in France as a combat doctor. Her work in music therapy and her writings on ancient history brought acclaim beyond the realm of medicine. Dr Agnes Savill is Dermatology's Renaissance Woman.

Discriminating minor and major forms of drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms: Facial edema aligns to the severe phenotype.

BACKGROUND: Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is a cutaneous and systemic drug allergy disorder. Patients exist on a severity spectrum, with some experiencing a mild form of the disorder that fails to meet the Registry of Severe Cutaneous Adverse Reactions (SCAR) to Drugs diagnostic criteria for DRESS. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether there were any cutaneous or dermatopathologic features that discriminate between the mild form of DRESS (DRESS minor) and the severe phenotype (DRESS major). METHODS: Hospitalized patients from a single center with a diagnosis of DRESS were prospectively recruited over a 7-year period. Clinical and dermatopathologic features were analyzed to discriminate between DRESS minor and DRESS major. RESULTS: Forty-five patients were included, of whom 19 had a Registry of Severe Cutaneous Adverse Reactions (SCAR) to Drugs score of ≤3 (DRESS minor) and 26 had a score of ≥4 (DRESS major). The mean latency period (P = .001), fever >38.5 °C (P = .001), and a reaction lasting >15 days (P = .010) discriminated DRESS major from DRESS minor. Facial edema was the sole discerning cutaneous feature (P = .025). Discriminating histopathologic features included basal squamatization (P = .005), dermal red blood cell extravasation (P = .009), and interface inflammation (P = .005). CONCLUSION: We propose a new classification system-DRESS minor-to distinguish the milder illness from the severe form, DRESS major. Facial edema and certain histopathologic features can help discriminate between major and minor versions.

A method of purifying alpha-synuclein in E. coli without chromatography.

Research has implicated alpha-synuclein (aSyn) in pathological protein aggregation observed in almost all patients with Parkinson's disease and more than 50% of patients with Alzheimer's disease. An easy and inexpensive method of purifying aSyn and developing an in vitro model system of Lewy body formation would enhance basic biomedical research. We report aSyn purification technique that leverages the amyloidogenic property of aSyn suitable for purifying monomeric aSyn without chromatography and denaturing agents. We expressed full-length and untagged aSyn in Rosetta(DE3) pLysS and purified ~60 µg of aSyn from 500 mL culture within 24 h. After IPTG-induced expression of aSyn in E. coli, we disrupted the cells with a sonicator. We centrifuged the cell lysate in a 15 mL tube, which leads to aSyn-induced aggregation of native E. coli proteins. After removing aggregates, centrifugation in a 30 kDa cut-off filter followed by a 10 kDa cut-off filter led to purified water-soluble aSyn. The identity of aSyn was confirmed by Western blot using anti-aSyn antibody and Edman sequencing. Its mass was determined to be 14.6 kDa using a MALDI TOF-MS mass spectrometer. The majority of aSyn led to water-suspended (as opposed to precipitated) aggregation of E. coli proteins with visible fibrous structures. The broad-spectrum binding and amyloidogenic property of aSyn is thus not only useful for inexpensive aSyn production for diverse applications, but it also expands studying its possible roles in human physiology. The aggregate of E. coli proteins induced by aSyn during the purification process may serve as a Lewy body model.

Systemic hypersensitivity reaction to Omnipaque radiocontrast medium: a case of mini-DRESS.

Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is a delayed drug reaction defined by physical signs and laboratory parameters. Mini-DRESS is a new entity, in cases that display some but not all features of DRESS. Cases of mini-DRESS have a less protracted course, and respond well to systemic corticosteroid treatment.

Sneddon's syndrome: it is all in the ectoderm.

A 51-year-old man gave a 2-year history of worsening mobility, cognitive decline and headaches. He had a history of thromboembolic stroke, recurrent transient ischaemic attacks and a spontaneous intraventricular haemorrhage. On examination, he had livedo reticularis and perniosis and a systolic murmur. Catheter cerebral angiography showed peripheral small-vessel and medium-vessel vasculopathy resulting in pruning of the distal cortical vessels and tortuous irregular distal collaterals. Skin biopsy showed subtle vasculopathy with ectasia of capillaries and postcapillary venules but no frank vasculitis or arterial thrombosis. Repeated serum antiphospholipid antibody titres were negative. The clinical features, skin biopsy and angiogram findings strongly supported a diagnosis of Sneddon's syndrome. Clinicians should consider Sneddon's syndrome in patients with livedo reticularis and stroke. There are treatment dilemmas in this situation when ischaemic and haemorrhagic cerebral events coexist.

Genome-wide association study identifies three novel susceptibility loci for severe Acne vulgaris.

Acne vulgaris (acne) is a common inflammatory disorder of the cutaneous pilo-sebaceous unit. Here we perform a genome-wide association analysis in the United Kingdom, comparing severe cases of acne (n=1,893) with controls (n=5,132). In a second stage, we genotype putative-associated loci in a further 2,063 acne cases and 1,970 controls. We identify three genome-wide significant associations: 11q13.1 (rs478304, Pcombined=3.23 × 10(-11), odds ratio (OR) = 1.20), 5q11.2 (rs38055, P(combined) = 4.58 × 10(-9), OR = 1.17) and 1q41 (rs1159268, P(combined) = 4.08 × 10(-8), OR = 1.17). All three loci contain genes linked to the TGFß cell signalling pathway, namely OVOL1, FST and TGFB2. Transcripts of OVOL1 and TFGB2 have decreased expression in affected compared with normal skin. Collectively, these data support a key role for dysregulation of TGFß-mediated signalling in susceptibility to acne.

Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis: are drug dictionaries correctly informing physicians regarding the risk?

BACKGROUND: Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis (SJS/TEN) are severe drug reactions associated with high mortality and multiple incapacitating sequelae. In the past 20 years, two large multinational case control studies, published in 1995 and 2008, had identified different degrees of drug association with SJS/TEN: 'strongly associated', 'associated', 'suspected' and 'not suspected' medications. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to check the adequacy of mention of risk of SJS/TEN in the drug dictionaries most widely used by physicians in five European countries. STUDY DESIGN: In each country one expert investigator looked at the most widely used drug dictionary (2009 edition) for mentions of risk of SJS/TEN. This was done for a predefined list of medications with a different degree of risk. The presence and clarity or absence of warning was compared with available evidence provided by published results from case-control studies. SETTING: The five countries participating in the RegiSCAR group: Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands and the UK. RESULTS: A total of 3,268 drug descriptions of medications for systemic use were analysed, including all brands of 14 'strongly associated' drugs, 5 'associated' drugs and 12 widely used drugs with no established association. Discrepancies were found by country, and between descriptions for different brands of the same generic. Among 522 descriptions of 14 'strongly associated' drugs, only 5 did not mention the risk. For the 1,013 descriptions of 'associated' drugs, 3 % did not mention the risk. One-third of 'not suspected' drugs contained a specific or less specific warning (e.g. bullous cutaneous eruption). Warnings for 'strongly associated' medications were often as imprecise as those for 'not suspected' drugs. CONCLUSION: Information on the risk of SJS/TEN in drug dictionaries needs improvement to enhance the quality of advice given by general physicians and to raise the understanding of risk by patients.

The development and validation of the King's Sarcoidosis Questionnaire for the assessment of health status.

RATIONALE: Health status is impaired in patients with sarcoidosis. There is a paucity of tools that assess health status in sarcoidosis. The objective of this study was to develop and validate the King's Sarcoidosis Questionnaire (KSQ), a new modular health status measure. METHODS: Patients with sarcoidosis were recruited from outpatient clinics. The development of the questionnaire consisted of three phases: item generation; item reduction, Rasch analysis to create unidimensional scales and validation; repeatability testing. RESULTS: 207 patients with sarcoidosis (organ involvement: 184 lung, 54 skin, 45 eye disease) completed a 65-item preliminary questionnaire. 36 items were removed due to redundancy or poor fit to the Rasch model. The final version of the KSQ consisted of five modules (General health status, Lung, Skin, Eye, Medications). Internal consistency assessed with Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.70-0.93 for KSQ modules. Concurrent validity of the Lung module was high compared with St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (r=-0.83) and moderate when compared to forced vital capacity (r=0.49). Concurrent validity with skin-specific and eye-specific measures ranged from r=-0.4 to 0.8. The KSQ was repeatable over 2 weeks (n=39), intraclass correlation coefficients for modules were 0.90-0.96. CONCLUSIONS: The KSQ is a brief, valid, self-completed health status measure for sarcoidosis. It can be used in the clinic to assess sarcoidosis from the patients' perspective.