Letter regarding “Histopathology of Psoriasis Treated With Zinc Pyrithione”
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To the Editor: It was with great interest that I read the article by Caroline G. Rowlands, M.B.B.S., F.R.C.P.C., about the “Histopathology of Psoriasis Treated With Zinc Pyrithione,” published in The American Journal of Dermatopathology(1). I am of the opinion that the paper is correct, and that the histopathologic findings after Skin Cap application (presumably a zinc pyrithione formulation) reveal a rapid and unequivocal improvement of the lesions, with full resolution after 14 days of treatment. However, I wish to point out that the commercial Skin Cap product was initially denounced in Spain, where it was first commercialized, because of its important concentrations of highly potent corticoids, which caused the Spanish health authorities to remove the product from the market. Similar measures were subsequently adopted in the rest of the European Community where the drug was also commercialized. In the United States, the manufacturers of the drug have also been denounced, on the grounds that although they claim the product to be inoffensive—supposedly containing only zinc pyrithione—the formulation in fact also contains 1.0% triamcinolone or 0.05% clobetasol propionate. The manufacturers falsely claim that the presence of such corticoids is the result of contamination during the production process. In view of these developments, I feel that two aspects should be taken into consideration. First, the author should determine whether the product used contained corticoids, because all the changes described in the review could be accounted for by the presence of a potent corticoid. Second, I would suggest that the study should be repeated with a certified zinc pyrithione solution at the same concentration as that supposedly found in the commercial Skin Cap product (which on the other hand is sure to be adulterated). I sincerely believe that the author would find my suspicions to be well founded. My hope in writing this letter is to prevent the manufacturers of this fraudulent product, which according to all indications can cause side effects, from using your article to favor sales in other countries such as Canada. Adolfo Aliaga, M.D.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.020 | 0.017 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".