Abstract
We herein report a 23-year-old Israeli man who presented with kerion of the glabrous skin on his left forearm. He noticed an itchy eruption which developed at the site of mosquito-bite while traveling in Thailand a month previously, and was thus treated by topical corticosteroids. The lesion had elevated and expanded to simulate a boggy tumor by the first visit. A histopathological examination showed a dermal neutrophilic abscesses around ruptured hair follicles. Many spores were detected by the KOH method. Trichophyton mentagrophytes were isolated based on a culture of a biopsy specimen. The lesion disappeared and only a scar remained after the administration of oral griseofulvin (375 mg/day) and clotrimazole cream. In our case, topical corticosteroids made his symptoms worse similar to several recently reported cases in Japan. However, the patient mainly revealed the clinical features described in Western countries; the lesion arose from an injured site, in tropical climates, due to a zoophilic fungus. This difference between Japanese cases and Western cases is thus considered to depend not only on the circumstances surrounding the initial cause, but also on the characteristics of their skin and their immunoresponse to fungus.
