DESCRIPTION

 Morphea is a rare condition that causes painless, discolored patches on your skin.

We report a case of plaque type of scleroderma with specific clinical features and conventional
histopathology, with sclerosis and hipocellularity of fibroblasts and preservation of elastic tissue.

We describe polarized light microscopy findings, on conventional stained slides and on picro sirius red stained slides.

We appreciate that picro sirius red stain allows a better characterization of collagen fi bres composition in papillary and reticular dermis, that is severely disturbed in morphea, with an inverse distribution of collagen fibres type I and III comparative with normal dermis.

Morphea, or localized scleroderma, is a fibrosing disease with unknown ethiology, limited on skin, subcutaneous tissue and underlying bone.

Clinically it can have more forms of expression and the plaque one is the most frequent (1) and can be generalized or unique.

By histological point of view it can be very frustrating, because of the paucity of cells in the conventional methode.

Because of paucity of cells in some forms of morphea, immunohistochemistry is useless, so we tried to find some other possibilities of study, polarized microscopy.

We will describe the aspect of the lesion in conventional methode and in polarized microscopy, the last one applied on a conventional slide and after stainig with picro sirius red.

We could fi nd a lot of literature data about scleroderma, we found a few data about polarized microscopy in scleroderma on conventional stained slide but we did not find any data about polarized microscopy of picro sirius red stained slides of scleroderma, so we think this is the fi rst description of this type.

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