INCONTINENTIA PIGMENTI IN JAPAN: Introduction of Twenty-One Observed Cases

AN INCREASED interest in incontinentia pigmenti is indicated by the recent articles of Carney,¹ Epstein and others,² Haber,³ and Findlay,⁴ who regard this disease not merely as a skin disease but preferably as a widespread syndrome comprising various congenital disorders.

In Japan, Kitamura and Chan⁶ described, in 1938, a baby girl showing the characteristic pigmented patterns of incontinentia pigmenti as the first Japanese case of this disease. Since then, 21 cases of incontinentia pigmenti have been observed in this country. However, as most of them^* were reported in Japanese medical journals during the recent war, they are unknown to world dermatologists, with the exception of the first case of Kitamura and Chan, which at that time was abstracted in Dermatologische Wochenschrift.⁷ So the relative frequency of this disease among the Japanese people, which is now presumed from the above-mentioned number of the observed