Summary of papers presented at the VETF Meeting in Honor of

Heinrich Köbner (1838-1904) was the founder of the dermatology clinic in Breslau (Germany, now Wroclaw, Poland) which was later led by the famous Neisser and Jadassohn. He described his eponymic phenomenon in 1872 in a case of psoriasis. This phenomenon was recognized by his contemporaries such as Kaposi and Darier « les frottements continus ou les pressions répétées semblent lui servir de cause provocatrice ou d’appel et il n’est pas exceptionnel de voir chez les porteurs de bandages herniaires, un vitiligo débutant par les régions où s’applique la pelote ou la plaque dorsale » Article VITILIGO by Jean Darier, in: La pratique dermatologique, 1900, T IV, p 849. Yvon Gauthier has developed in the 1990s a registry for mechanical trauma in vitiligo, urging that prevention matters (1). He has shown melanocyte detachment after standardized skin friction in non lesional skin of patients with NSV (2) and developed a new theory: the « melanocytorrhagy» (3). The rest of the presentation was focused on the microinflammatory theory of vitiligo as a possible missing link to explain the « melanocytorrhagy » (4). Arguments for suspecting a role of micro-inflammation as a destabilizing agent for melanocytes in common NSV vitiligo are the following : 1) the presence of microinfammatory foci at borders of depigmented lesions 2) Inactive pro IL1 present in stratum corneum 3) Koebner phenomenon: possibly related to low-key activation of epidermal reservoir of IL1 beta. The Koebner phenomenon has had a great influence in the teaching at Bordeaux department of dermatology under Yvon Gauthier.