Ewha Med J.  2012 Sep;35(2):76-82. 10.12771/emj.2012.35.2.76.

Drug Eruption

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Dermatology, Ewha Womans University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. uwon313@ewha.ac.kr

Abstract

Drug eruptions are common problems in hospital inpatients and outpatients. Cutaneous drug reactions range from mild to severe and from those localized only to skin to those associated with systemic disease. Cutaneous drug reactions are also a challenging diagnostic problem since they can mimic a large variety of skin diseases, including viral exanthem, collagen vascular disease, neoplasia, bacterial infection, psoriasis, and autoimmune blistering disease, among others. Furthermore, determining a particular medication which caused an eruption is often difficult when the patient is taking multiple drugs. In this review, clinical manifestations of adverse cutaneous drug reactions are described. A morphologic approach to drug eruption includes those that are classified as exanthematous eruption, urticaria, pustular eruption, bullous eruption, fixed drug eruption, photosensitive eruption, skin necrosis, lichenoid eruption, cutaneous pseudolymphoma, lupus erythematosus, and hand-foot syndrome. And also, recently reported cutaneous adverse reactions associated with newly developed drugs, such as epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors, low molecular weight tyrosine kinase inhibitors, tumor necrosis factor-alpha antagonists, sirolimus and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, are discussed.

Keyword

Cutaneous; Drug eruption; Morphology

MeSH Terms

Bacterial Infections
Blister
Collagen
Drug Eruptions
Exanthema
Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor
Hand-Foot Syndrome
Humans
Hydrazines
Inpatients
Lichenoid Eruptions
Molecular Weight
Necrosis
Outpatients
Protein-Tyrosine Kinases
Pseudolymphoma
Psoriasis
Receptor, Epidermal Growth Factor
Sirolimus
Skin
Skin Diseases
Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha
Urticaria
Vascular Diseases
Collagen
Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor
Hydrazines
Protein-Tyrosine Kinases
Receptor, Epidermal Growth Factor
Sirolimus
Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha

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