Maria-Magdalena Roth, MD, PhD

During pregnancy, every mother-to-be undergoes radical psychological and physiological changes (endocrinologic, immunologic, metabolic, or vascular) whose influence may trigger various skin manifestations, even during the very first weeks of gestation.

Figure 2a. Highly pruritic abdominal rash in a 24-year-old woman’s first pregnancy. A biopsy and direct immunofluorescence confirmed the suspected diagosis of pemphigoid gestationis. (Image courtesy of Dr Scott Ross, ConsultantLive.)