[Cutaneous manifestations of chronic atrophic polychondritis and their relation to aphtosis]

A young woman aged 23 showed the clinical feature of relapsing polychondritis. This disease included recurrent inflammation of right ear, nasal rib and larynx cartilages. She had also arthritis of ankle and wrist. She never had aphtosis before her cartilaginous disease. Buccal and genital erosions similar to aphtae occurred before each recurrent attack of cartilage inflammation. In one instance aseptic vesiculo-pustular and erythema nodosum like lesions occurred. This case raises the question of whether this is a never reported association of two diseases or relapsing polychondritis may have dermatological symptoms bordering aphtosis. The latter hypothesis is supported: firstly by the fact that skin symptoms of aphtosis had been reported separately in cases of relapsing polychondritis (buccal aphtae, pustular eruption, erythema nodosum, recurrent thrombophlebitis); secondly by a case very similar to our (Thivolet, see text) showing a typical feature of relapsing polychondritis with a complete dermatological aspect of aphtosis.