John Libbey Eurotext




Fixed drug eruption: a disease mediated by self-inflicted responses of intraepidermal T cells
European Journal of Dermatology. Volume 17, Number 3, 201-8, May-June 2007, Review article
Free Article
Author(s) : Tetsuo Shiohara, Yoshiko Mizukawa
Summary : It is difficult to dissect disease-causing T cells and anti-inflammatory T cells in a biopsy specimen obtained at a given time, which would represent a single time point in the development of the lesions. In fixed drug eruption (FDE), the resting lesions long after clinical resolution have many clues to identify the disease-causing T cells, because they contain a large homogeneous population of CD8 ⁺ T cells that are distributed along the epidermal basal layer and have the capacity to rapidly produce large amounts of IFN-γ. These intraepidermal CD8 ⁺ T cells are likely to be a major actor in epidermal injury observed in FDE lesions. In this review, we ask how they arise and how they cause epidermal injuries, which present with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations and are often mistaken as signs of other skin disease.
Keywords : fixed drug eruption, recall phenomenon, intraepidermal CD8 ⁺ T cells, IFN-γ, viral infection, epidermal injury

Fixed drug eruption: a disease mediated by self-inflicted responses of intraepidermal T cells