Folliculitis decalvans

This paper highlights how a publication about a new treatment for folliculitis decalvans has changed our management of this seemingly intractable disease. The publication introduced a combination therapy of rifampicin and clindamycin for folliculitis decalvans, which seemed to offer a significant advantage over treatments already in use. We wish to report our successful experience with this regime and to recommend its use as the first‐line approach for therapy of this disfiguring disease. The recent paper ‘Folliculitis decalvans including tufted folliculitis: clinical, histological and therapeutic findings’ (published in 1999 in the British Journal of Dermatology) by J. J. Powell, P. R. Dawber and K. Gatter1 introduced a new treatment regime for folliculitis decalvans, namely oral rifampicin 300 mg twice daily and clindamycin 300 mg twice daily for 10 weeks. It also investigated the related condition ‘tufted folliculitis’ by means of history and clinical course, histology, bacterial culture and immunohistochemistry.