Bullous Pemphigoid in a Native American/ American Indian Patient

Globally, bullous pemphigoid affects less than fifteen people per million per year worldwide. This autoimmune disease occurs most frequently amongst those of northern European ancestry and, most predominantly, in the elderly over sixty-five. While bullous pemphigoid can present as a paraneoplastic syndrome, it can occasionally occur alone. Bullous pemphigoid typically presents with several large blister-like lesions on the skin of flexor surfaces and the trunk. These generally vary in size and stage and are formed after an autoimmune attack on the hemidesmosomes, causing a separation between the basement membrane and the basement membrane cells. Here we present, to our knowledge, the first known case of non-paraneoplastic bullous pemphigoid in an elderly Native American / American Indian patient.