What are some of the common laboratory abnormalities associated with GPP?
Joseph B. Chastain Chair of Dermatology
Tulane University Health Sciences Center
New Orleans, LA
When you have a patient with GPP, especially those with systemic symptoms and those who are very systemically ill, those with fever, chills, erythroderma, we have to think of other things that can occur and make this disease worse. Comorbidities such as renal insufficiency, liver abnormalities are all associated with the GPP. Additionally, electrolytes can be very much out of whack with GPP, so we do see hypocalcemia very commonly in GPP. We also see, as sort of pathognomonic, a neutrophilia in the blood component. So when you get a CBC with the dip, you'll see an absolute neutrophilia or lymphocytosis and those are little characteristic abnormalities that should direct you more towards GPP than other potential differential diagnosis.