Edited by
Shamim I. Ahmad
Fumio Hanaoka

2009

Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), meaning parchment skin and pigmentary disturbance, is a rare and mostly autosomal recessive genetic disorder that was originally named by two dermatologists, the Austrian Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra and his Hungarian son-in-law Moritz Kaposi in 1874 and 1883. The earliest published record (PubMed) available on the internet is a publication in 1949 by Ulicna-Zapletalova under the title, “Contribution to the pathogenesis of  xeroderma pigmentosum”.