The ultrastructural localization of IgA deposits in chronic bullous disease of childhood (CBDC)

Abstract

A case of bullous disease in a child with linear IgA immune deposits at the basement membrane zone and with some clinical, histological, and electron microscopic characteristics both of dermatitis herpetiformis and bullous pemphigoid, is described. The bulla formed between the basal lamina and basal cell membranes as in bullous pemphigoid, but at the same time there were numerous inflammatory cells in the dermis just below the partly destroyed basal lamina and also abundant fibrin deposits in very recent bulla and in the skin, all of which is rather characteristic of dermatitis herpetiformis. Ultrastructurally the IgA deposits were located chiefly below the lamina basalis (the dermal type) but also, though less abundantly, in the lamina lucida, very much as we have seen them to be in adult cases with linear IgA immune deposits at the basement membrane zone. The investigations have supplied further evidence showing the chronic bullous disease of childhood to be actually a counterpart of the form in adults with the same linear localization of IgA deposits.