[Sweet's syndrome. A study of 10 cases and review of the literature]

Ten cases of acute febrile neutrophilic dermatosis or Sweet's disease have been studied clinically and histologically. Seventy percent of the patients were females with mean age of 43.1 +/-9 years. All of them presented the typical skin lesions consisting of papules and painful erythematous--edematous plaques in face, neck and upper chest. Fever was observed in seven patients and painful joints in four cases. One case presented polyarthritis of the big joints and there was one other case of conjuntivitis. The analytical data revealed a constant increase in sedimentation rate observed in 90% of patients. Leukocytosis was observed in 30% of patients and neutrophilia in 40%. Histologically, the lesions showed a neutrophilic infiltration of the skin without signs of vasculitis. Eight patients received treatment with Prednisone per os, one of whom, because of his relapses, was later given Potassium Iodine. Another patient was treated with Indomethacin, and one patient did not received any treatment. The evolution was favorable in all cases with sustained remissions. Sweet's Syndrome has been described associated mainly with acute myeloid leukemia in 10-20% of patients and in isolated instances with other systemic and neoplasic diseases. The concomitant conditions in 50% of our cases were: Ulcerative colitis, nodular sclerotic Hodgkin disease, infiltrative ductal carcinoma of the breast, carcinoma of the uterus neck and Crohn's disease; these last two associations had not been previously described in the literature.