Reproduction of the skin lesions of polymorphous light eruption: a case report and a review of the Japanese literature.

A case of polymorphous light eruption with plaque-type lesions is reported. A 55-year-old male had pruritic erythemas and plaques on the head, the face, the nape, the back of the hands, and the left loin within days following sun exposure. The patient's minimal erythema dose (MED) (60 mJ/cm2) of sunlamp irradiation for ultraviolet (UV) B was normal. Three once-daily exposures to 2 MED of UVB (Epstein's repeat phototest technique) produced pruritic papules with a similar microscopic appearance to that of the patient's skin lesion, indicating that the action spectrum causing the lesion seemed to be within the UVB waveband.