[Cutaneous protothecosis: first case in Taiwan].

In November 1985, a 5-year-old Chinese girl presented to the Dermatological Department of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, having scaly erythematous plaque with mild itching on her right upper eyelid. Skin biopsy and fungal cultures were performed after failure of initial topical steroid therapy. The histopathology revealed many acute and chronic inflammatory cells infiltrating the dermis and H & E stain revealed some foamy vacuolated spores; P.A.S. and Gomori's methenamine stain also showed many spores and sporangia containing endospores. Lactophenol cotton blue and methylene blue wet mount preparations were made from the colony growing on Sabouraud's agar. Microscopically, these showed many round or oval spores and endospore-containing sporangia, corresponding with the histopathology. This microorganism grew as a milky white yeast-like colony on Sabouraud's dextrose agar, blood agar, EMB, Tween 80 cornmeal agar, chocolate agar, MacConkey agar and brain heart infusion with sheep RBC agar. On Pagano-Levin medium, the colony became deep red in color and in the thioglycollate broth tube culture, it was suspended on the upper layer as a whitish ring-form of granules. The microorganism showed no urease activity. In the assimilation tests, there were positive reactions to glucose, galactose, trehalose, fructose, mannose and glycerol, and negative reactions to maltose, xylose, raffinose, sucrose, lactose, cellabiose, n-propanol, etc. The electronmicroscopic examination of the colony revealed sporangium containing spores and characteristic dense body and plastids in the spores.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)