Abstract
The 209 th Meeting of the Nagasaki Regional Society of the Japanese Dermatological Association was held on 24 th April 1977 in honor of Prof. Dr. M. Nogita who retired a month ago from the office of director of the Dermatological University Clinic, Nagasaki. This is a recollection and supplementary remarks on acropigmentatio reticularis which I made at this Meeting. It has been 34 years since we found in Nagasaki the first case of this disease and published it in 1943 as a kind of symmetric acral dyschromatosis. Acropigmentatio reticularis is now seen at times in Japan. Consisting of small, slightly sunken, uniformly brown macules which appear along furrows of the skin surface and inlaid with smallest, not pigmented, not depressed, normal skin areas, it forms a peculiar pigmentary network mainly on the external surfaces of the distal parts of extremities. Its existence universally in the world was first confirmed 1976 by Griffiths who found it in Iranians, Englishmen and negros. Histologically, besides atrophy of the epidermis and epidermal melanin deposition hitherto mentioned, Griffiths saw an increase in the number of clear cells in the basal region of the epidermis and no evidence of pigmentary incontinence in the upper dermis. According to Griffiths acropigmentatio symmetrica of Dohi, an another characteristic acral pigmentation seen in Japan, has also been recognized in 1952 by Gartmann and in 1964 by Siemens in Europians. However, the descriptions and photographs in the originals of both authors give us the impression that their cases are somewhat different from the prototype of Dohi's as well as of Kitamura's acropigmentation. In this respect Toyama told us once his opinion that among the Japanese with moderately dark skin there are various pigmentary disorders which can not be found or are disregarded in the whites and negros. From the theoretical point of view it should be said that all these pigment anomalies, especially as hereditary diseases, can occur in the whites, negros and any other races in the same way as in the Japanese.
