A multicenter, randomized, double-blind, vehicle-controlled clinical study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of MAS063DP in 60 paediatric patients affected by atopic dermatitis (AD), aged between 2 and 17 years. Using the Investigator's Global Assessment (IGA) score for AD, patients with a score of 2 (mild) or 3 (moderate) were enrolled in the study. Patients were randomly selected to receive MAS063DP (20 patients), MAS060 (20 patients, a similar formulation with lower key ingredients' concentration and no preservatives) or vehicle (20 patients).The study consisted in a treatment period of 43 days, with clinical evaluations at baseline (day 1), days 8, 15, 22, 29 and 43, at which time the treatment was stopped. MAS063DP showed nearly 80% improvement in IGA score at day 22, compared with 16.6% and 26.3% with the MAS060 and vehicle respectively. A statistically significant difference was found by comparing MAS063DP with MAS060 (p < 0.0001); a similar result was evidenced comparing MAS063DP and vehicle (p = 0.001). By contrast, no significant difference was found between MAS060 and vehicle. A statistically significant difference was sustained until the end of the study. MAS063DP may therefore be considered as one of the available regimens effective in the treatment of mild-to-moderate AD in children and adolescents.

Short anagen syndrome (SAS) is a recently described disease, but is rarely reported in the literature probably because of its under-recognized status. It is characterized by the inability to grow long hair because of an idiopathic short anagen phase. The condition is not associated with hair shaft fragility or hair unruliness. The patients complain of abnormally short scalp hair and report that they never had a haircut. The condition is benign and most of the reported cases had no associated systemic diseases or skin disorders. Hair length tends to improve spontaneously after puberty. The main differential diagnoses include loose anagen hair syndrome (LAS).

In early infancy, a congenital area of alopecia of the scalp may be the clinical presentation of various diseases, with the two most common being sebaceous naevus and aplasia cutis congenita. Typical lesions are easily diagnosed, but soon after birth, the differential diagnosis may be difficult if the clinical features of the lesion are not distinctive. In this paper, we report the usefulness of dermatoscopy in such cases.

A 16-year-old Caucasian boy was referred to our outpatient clinic for a burning sensation on the soles appearing after immersion in water for just a few minutes, of 1 year's duration. At the time of his visit the skin was initially unaffected, but after 3 minutes of contact with water at 20°C his feet became white and wrinkled, with confluent white papules over the soles. The lesions were more evident on the heels (Fig. 1) and spontaneously resolved approximately 20 minutes after drying of the involved surfaces. The boy stated that during each episode he experienced mild pain and a burning sensa-

Juglone is the active ingredient of the green flesh of walnuts and is known to be a strong irritant. We report the first two paediatric cases of contact pigmentation and acute irritant contact dermatitis due to the juice of green walnut husks in two young nursery-school playmates.