Treatment of an infantile acne with oral isotretinoin.

We report the case of a little girl who presented with a nodulocystic acne which had its onset at the age of 20 months. She had no clinical or biological features of endocrinopathy. The lesions did not respond to conventional antibiotics so she was started on oral isotretinoin. A seven-month treatment period was necessary to achieve remission. The onset of infantile acne is usually around 6 to 16 months and there is a male predominance. The onset is later in females. Oral erythromycin is the first line treatment when topical therapies are inefficacious. Some cystic lesions do not respond to oral antibiotics. In these cases, oral isotretinoin may be effective and the treatment is similar to that of an adult. Clinical and biological tolerance is good with no growth retardation. Lesions may relapse after the withdrawal of isotretinoin but they are less important and easily controlled with topical treatments. Isotretinoin can be used for nodulocystic acne to reduce the risk of scarring.

Polymerase Chain reaction generated probes for fluorescence in situ hybridization.

The extended use of Fish with centromeric probes in many cytogenetic laboratories is often impaired by the cost of this technique. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) constitutes a simple way to generate and label such centromeric probes at low cost. Two types of human DNA source can be used: 1--Somatic hybrid cell lines containing a unique human chromosome. The specific amplification of the human subset of alphoid DNA is realised with a primer pair specific for the consensus region of human alpha satellite sequence. 2--Total Human DNA. This time, a primer pair specific for the alpha satellite DNA of the chromosome of interest must be designed. These probes, labelled during the PCR reaction by direct incorporation of modified dUTP, are actually widely used in our laboratory, alone or mixed with other probes (chromosome painting or locus specific probes).