Saturday, April 4, 2009

Blaschko's lines: strange stripes all over the body


An extremely rare and unexplained phenomenon of human anatomy, Blaschko's lines were first presented in 1901 by German dermatologist Alfred Blaschko. Neither a specific disease nor a predictable symptom of a disease, Blaschko's lines are an invisible pattern built into human DNA. Many inherited and acquired diseases of the skin or mucosa manifest themselves according to these patterns, creating the visual appearance of stripes. The cause of the stripes is thought to result from mosaicism; they do not correspond to nervous, muscular, or lymphatic systems. What makes them more remarkable is that they correspond quite closely from patient to patient, usually forming a "V" shape over the spine and "S" shapes over the chest, stomach, and sides.

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