Lysosomes in human skin after long periods of treatment with chloroquine.

To the Editor.— In the May 1980Archives(116:587-591), in a review on antimalarial agents, Tanenbaum and Tuffanelli reported the experimental induction of myeloid bodies in the hearts and livers of rats after chloroquine phosphate treatment. 1,2 Acid phosphatase staining indicated that they were lysosomal in nature. We want to report the results of our ultrastructural study of samples of skin taken from a patient treated during a long period with high doses of chloroquine. (For six years, the patient took a daily dosage of three 100-mg tablets.) 3 In addition to finding myeloid bodies in the keratinocytes (Fig 1), we found that certain dermal cells showed numerous, identical bodies within their cytoplasm. They were found in fibroblasts, endothelial cells, Schwann cells (Fig 2), and the axons. Their sizes ranged from 0.5 to 1.0 jum. On the cytochemical staining technique for detecting lysosomal acid