A 49-year-old man had a skin rash of three years' duration consisting of follicular pustules surrounded by areolae of purpura. He had had hepatosplenomegaly and suffers from arthralgia and purpura of the legs. His serum was shown to contain a cryoglobulin consisting of an IgG-IgM complex, with rheumatoid factor activity. Histologically, vasculitis was present around the pustules. The syndrome of purpura, arthralgia, and mixed IgM-IgG cryoglobulinemia is one of a group of essential cryoglobulinemias due to circulating immune complexes, presumably causing damage at the sites of their precipitation. The chronic follicular pustular purpura, which has not been described previously to our knowledge, is assumed to have evolved on the background of subclinical perifollicular vasculitis.

A patient with systemic lupus erythematosus with predominant skin involvement is described. A good correlation between disease activity manifested by skin lesions and between the titer of anti-DNA antibodies and C 3 component of complement was observed. Disease activity was accompanied by a high titer of anti-DNA antibodies and by a low level of the C3 component of complement; these parameters were reversed during remission. We conclude that these parameters are useful in the diagnosis and management of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus limited to the skin.

A patient presented with an infiltrate resembling scleromyxoedema Arndt-Gottron which proved to be metastatic signet-ring cell carcinoma of the stomach. Later, round infiltrates appeared on the trunk. The primary lesion was excised 9 years previously and the cutaneous involvement was the sole manifestation of the process for more than a year. Most skin metastases of gastric carcinoma fall into three groups: generalized, by hematogenic dissemination; periumbilical; and those spreading by lymphatics to neck, head and upper thorax. The morphology may in some cases give a clue as to the histological composition of the infiltrate. In our case the scleromyxoedema-like morphology was due to production of mucus by the carcinoma.

In this double‐blind cross‐over study allopurinol was found to be no more effective than a placebo in the treatment of psoriasis.