Actinic Folliculitis (Formerly Acne Aestivalis and Mallora Acne): A Report of 18 Patients and Review of the Literature

In 1972, Hjorth et al. (1) coined the term acne aestivalis/Mallorca acne to describe an acneiform eruption that occurred in a group of 40 patients, 37 of them were females, aged 20-40 years, with a negative medical history of acne.The eruption appeared 15-30 days after sun exposure, without the use of sunscreens.It was characterized by papules, with rare comedones and pustules, located on the face, neck, shoulders, upper trunk and upper limbs.Histopathological picture was characterized by follicular keratosis.The arms eruption lasted 3-6 months.The name of acne aestivalis was subsequently used by other authors (2-7).The term solar acne or acne solaris was also suggested (8).It was hypothesized that acne aestivalis was, simply, acne aggravated by sunlight (9).In 1985, Nieboer suggested the name of actinic superficial folliculitis (10).The latter was used by other authors (11-13), although the name actinic folliculitis and recurrent photosensitive pustular eruption were also suggested (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19).Review of the literature revealed that, on the basis of clinical presentations and histopathological pictures, all these 3 entities, acne aestivalis/Mallorca acne, actinic superficial folliculitis and actinic folliculitis, are the same disease.As the term of acne aestivalis/Mallorca acne is rather old, we agree to name this entity actinic folliculitis (AF).We present 18 patients with AF: to our knowledge, this is one of the largest caselists reported so far.