A SKIN ERUPTION serves its greatest purpose when it signals an association with systemic disease. It is all the more valuable if it is clinically distinctive and histologically pathognomonic. Elastosis perforans serpignosa (EPS) is such an entity.
This dermatoses was not recognized until 1953 when Lutz1 reported the first case. Two years later Miescher2 reported a second case and performed elastic tissue stains which demonstrated the apparent penetration of abnormal dermal elastic fibers through the epidermis, the pathognomonic feature of EPS. Approximately 65 case reports have been published since.
The simultaneous occurrence of EPS with a variety of systemic genetic disorders has been noted. The sixth patient with the combination of EPS and mongolism is recorded here.
Report of a Case
This 7-year-old white boy, the youngest of three brothers, has the classical features of mongolism. About a year ago an arched ¾ circle of individual papules, varying in