Hidradenitis suppurativa-acne inversa: a relevant dermatosis in paediatric patients

Funding sources: none. Conflicts of interest: none declared. Dear Editor, Hidradenitis suppurativa–acne inversa (HS‐AI) is a chronic, inflammatory, recurrent, debilitating skin disease of the terminal hair follicle that usually presents with painful, deep‐seated, inflamed lesions in the apocrine‐gland‐bearing areas of the body.1 The disease typically occurs in the second and third decade of life.2 As far as the onset of HS‐AI is concerned in paediatric patients (0–16 years), only a few data are available in the literature. Vasquez et al.3 described an incidence of 37 patients per 100 000 persons in the age group 0–19 years, whereas in Palmer and Keefe's study onset of disease before the age of 11 years occurred in only 2% of patients.4 Recently Deckers et al.5 reported an early onset (before the 13th birthday) in 7·7% of patients. We evaluated the relationship between the age of onset of HS‐AI and paediatric age in the last 235 patients (mean age 35·9 years, range 7–69) seen at the HS‐AI dedicated clinic of the Dermatology Section, University of Ferrara (Fig. 1).