Testosterone for Apocrine Diseases: Hidrosadenitis, Fox-Fordyce Disease

THE REMISSION of apocrine gland diseases during pregnancy¹challenges dermatologists to find the responsible factor and use it in nonpregnant patients with such sweat-gland disorders. The important role of hormones and endocrine glands in the gestational process strengthens belief that they also exert a predominant influence over the apocrine glands and diseases. The literature on the endocrines in pregnancy is huge indeed, and excretion assays for individual products have been carried out by various investigators. Many articles and textbooks record the quantitative changes and relationships among the steroids during the progress of pregnancy. Venning has done much work in this field and accompanies one of her communications²with a composite curve of excretion of some of the steroids during pregnancy. At first glance it seems logical to expect steroids augmented in pregnancy to aid the diseases of apocrine glands. But such hormones failed in these