Piebaldism: rare but all dermatologists have heard this strange term during residency
- Blaschko lines are a distribution of skin lines which can be found in certain dermatosis, often genetic.
- Examples include incontinentia pigmenti, epidermal nevus, lichen striatus…
- These lines carry the name of Dr Alfred Blaschko (1858-1922), a German dermatologist who described the lines on a statue and published the pictoral diagram in 1901.
- The cause of the lines is unknown, but one hypothesis is that they are the result of lyonization, X-inactivation which is a process by which one of the two copies of the X chromosome present in females (XX) is inactivated.
Source of information: Crissey JT el al. Dermatology and Dermatologists (2002). Parthenon Publishing
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