Drs C A HENDERSON and A S HIGHET (York District Hospital, York Y03 7HE) write: We report three cases of depression associated with etretinate treatment. In 1984 a 49 year old, 90 kg man with plaque psoriasis started taking etretinate 100 mg/day. Despite a reduction in dose the drug had to be discontinued owing to peeling skin, thinning hair, and depression. These effects resolved a few weeks la...

Etretinate (Tigason) and ibuprofen have been compared in a double-blind controlled trial in psoriatic arthritis to see if we could confirm a specific action for this vitamin A derivative suggested from earlier uncontrolled studies. Eleven out of 20 patients completed 24 weeks of therapy with etretinate (up to 0.5 mg/kg/day) whereas only 1/20 patients completed 24 weeks of therapy with ibuprofen...

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is the most common late complication of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT). The sclerodermatous form of the disease is often refractory to standard treatment modalities. Based on reports of response to etretinate, a synthetic retinoid, among patients with scleroderma, we have added etretinate to the treatment regimen of 32 patients with refract...

Acitretin, a synthetic retinoid, is a pharmacologically active metabolite of etretinate. It replaced etretinate for the treatment of severe psoriasis (e.g. psoriatic erythrodermia and pustular psoriasis) because of its more favourable pharmacokinetic profile. Acitretin is 50 times less lipophilic than etretinate and has a shorter elimination half-life. However, there is evidence that small amou...

The effect of etretinate, applied systemically, on epidermal Langerhans cells was studied. The numbers and shapes of Langerhans cells were observed on split epidermis, and the percentage of Langerhans cells in whole epidermal cells was determined with a flow cytometrial system. On an epidermal sheet, the number of Langerhans cells changed biphasically, first the number increased, then decreased...

A "high-performance" liquid-chromatographic separation of retinoids (retinol, isotretinoin, all-trans retinoic acid, retinal, etretinate, and retinyl acetate) in serum is described. The separation was used in developing a quantitative assay for retinol (vitamin A) and two therapeutic analogs, isotretinoin (13-cis-retinoic acid) and etretinate (Ro 10-9359). The procedure requires 1 mL of serum. ...

A. Tostia, U. Albisinni, V. Bettoli, L. Merlini, L. Lama, Departments of Dermatology, Neuropathology, and Radiology University of Bologna, Bologna (Italy) Dear Sir, The recent article by Gilbert et al. [1] regarding the lack of skeletal radiographic changes during short-term etretinate therapy for psoriasis prompt us to report a peculiar skeletal involvement that we have observed in 2 patients ...

Visceral heterotaxy syndrome causes abnormal arrangement of thoracoabdominal organs and severe complex cardiac anomalies by abnormal laterality. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the incidence and pattern of heterotaxy syndrome in etretinate and all-tran retinoic acid treated pregnant DDY mice. Pregnant DDY mice were intragastrically given a single dose of 15 mg/kg of etretinate at...

We report on three cases of a novel syndrome associated with treatment for psoriasis with the retinoid etretinate. The distinctive features of this syndrome include rigidity that is restricted to the axial muscles, impairment of neck extension greater than flexion, impairment of anteflexion at the waist, severe impairment of lateral flexion at both the waist and the neck, and, in one case, rigi...