Use and abuse of psoralens.
The psoralens 1 are furocoumarins to which most people in the United States have been exposed. Celery contains psoralen. Oil of bergamot, widely used in perfumes, contains 5-methoxypsoralen. Thus, there are few persons who have not ingested psoralen and probably no adult woman who has not applied a psoralen to her skin. Plants containing psoralen have been used to produce pigmentation for at least 3,000 years. Recently, oil of bergamot has been used for this purpose. Scientific investigation of the psoralens began when Kuske 2 and, later, Fahmy and his group 3 isolated the active chemicals from a variety of plants. Many physicians in different countries began to study these compounds. Lerner, Denton, and Fitzpatrick 4 and Kelly and Pinkus 5 initiated clinical evaluation in the United States. The chemical alterations in the psoralesn which occur after oral ingestion or topical application to the skin are not known. Exposure of
Local Application of 8-Methoxypsoralen in Vitiligo1
The recent introduction of the oxypsoralens seems to have made available a means of inducing repigmentation of vitiliginous and other leukodermic areas with fair regularity (1—3). The relative merits of various regimens of therapy and the proportion of clinically satisfactory results are still under discussion (4—9). The present report does not attempt to settle any issues, particularly does not touch on the question of whether oral or local treatment is preferable. We merely want to make available our results with the purely external treatment of twenty patients over the last several years. Some observations will be mentioned that may deserve further study. Table I lists the details of the cases arranged according to the results obtained.
Phloroglucinol derivatives from Hypericum japonicum.
The isolation and identification of a new phloroglucinol derivative (2), a diterpenol (4), together with the known compounds flavesone (1) and sarothralen B (3), from the aerial parts of Hypericum japonicum are reported. Their structures were established by extensive spectral analysis and the structure of (3) has also been confirmed by a single crystal X-ray determination.