La Revue de médecine interne
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Comparative Study
[The fate of the abstracts presented to the biannual meetings of the French National Society of Internal Medicine].
Medical meetings give the opportunity to present oral communications or posters to the attending participants. However, the peer-reviewed publication of a full article allows to reach a wide readership. ⋯ Many oral communications and posters that are presented in medical meeting are not followed by the publication of a peer-reviewed full article despite the modern means of communication. However, this issue is of paramount importance as beyond the legitimate personal satisfaction of a publication, the scientific and academic recognition are the ground of medical career achievement for many physicians.
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Case Reports
[Symptomatic adrenal insufficiency secondary to the use of cutaneous topical steroids for skin-bleaching].
In black population, the skin-bleaching with cutaneous topical corticosteroids on a large body area is a widespread practice and is associated with numerous cutaneous complications. We report a 25-year-old Congolese woman who was admitted for weakness, arthralgias and abdominal pain. The association of a relative hyperpigmentation of the small joints of hands and feet with clinical features of hypercorticism led to suspect a chronic use of cutaneous topical steroids for skin-bleaching. ⋯ Clinical symptoms resolved with hydrocortisone therapy. One year later, the patient admitted a five-year continuous use of cutaneous topical steroids (betamethasone, 0.05%). Skin-bleaching through chronic use of cutaneous topical steroids, is a common practice in black women, and should be suspected in the presence of adrenal insufficiency with or without clinical features of hypercorticism, and conversely, skin-bleaching users should be tested for hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal function.
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Editorial Comparative Study
[Should we be afraid of the anti-TNFalpha drugs in 2008?].