Hypereosinophilic syndrome presenting as pruriginous erythroderma

Abstract

Hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES) is a multi-organ disease (heart, eye, lungs or nervous tissue). The etiology and pathogenesis of HES is still unknown. It is characterized by 1500 eosinophils/?l of eosinophils in peripheral blood observed during at least six months without any evidence for other known causes of eosinophilia. The skin manifestations of the disease were pruritic, erythematous macules, papules, plaques or nodules and rarely urticaria, angioedema, livedo reticularis, eosinophilic cellulitis, cutaneous necrotizing eosinophilic vasculitis, retiform purpura. Among the skin lesions erythroderma is a rare complication of HES and has only been reported in a few cases (Launay et al., 2002, Granjo et al., 2002). We report here a 78-yrs-old man with pruriginous erythroderma leading to the diagnosis of hypereosinophilic syndrome. In dermatological examination erythrodermia and mild desquamation was noticed entire the body surface with bilateral ectropion. © 2011 OMU All rights reserved.