Helen Ollendorff Curth

Helene Ollendorff Curth (28 February 1899 – 17 June 1982) was a German-American dermatologist, known for her studies on acanthosis nigricans (AN) and introducing Curth's criteria, a set of characteristics for associating skin signs as markers for internal cancers. She is named in two rare inherited skin diseases, the Buschke–Ollendorff syndrome and Ichthyosis Hystrix, Curth-Macklin Type. A medical sign in secondary syphilis, known as the Ollendorff sign, and one form of measuring clubbed fingers, known as the Curth's angle, are named after her.

Ollendorff Curth completed her early training under Josef Jadassohn at the University of Breslau. She moved to Berlin in 1924 and was appointed assistant to Abraham Buschke. In 1931 she settled in New York where she established a dermatology practice with her husband and became associated with Columbia University. During her career in the US, she published the first description of cases of Behçet's disease there, introduced patch testing for industrial employees in New York, and worked with Madge Thurlow Macklin.

Early life and education Helene Ollendorff Curth, affectionately referred to as "Lene", was born on 28 February 1899, into a Jewish family in Wrocław, Poland, then Breslau, Germany. Her father Isodor Ollendorf, was a lawyer and councillor who died in 1911, and her mother Paula spent much of her life working to improve women's rights. The youngest of four siblings, her sister and one brother died young. Together they investigated the sensitivity of secondary syphilitic lesions. Known as the Ollendorff probe sign or Ollendorff sign, the phenomenon referred to deep pain when a syphilitic bump was gently prodded, and was used to help distinguish the lesions of secondary syphilis from similarly looking non-syphilitic ones. However, she described the sign with Jadassohn before going to work with Buschke and the Curths in a memoir to Buschke in 1983 clarify themselves that the sign is called Ollendorffs sign.

Subsequently, in 1924, she moved to Berlin to train in dermatology at the under Abraham Buschke, and was later appointed his assistant. Rare and hereditary, they found the disease to present with widespread painless small bumps in the skin, sometimes associated with bone involvement.

During her time in Berlin, she conducted her early studies on the skin sign acanthosis nigricans (AN). She described the "triple symptom complex" of ulcers of the mouth and genitals (genital ulcer and mouth ulcer), and eye inflammation leading to hypopyonas, as described by Hulusi Behçet in 1937. Medical professionals have debated whether the disease name should include Benediktos Adamantiades. In 1954, with Madge Thurlow Macklin, she gave the first description of a rare type of ichthyosis hystrix. In New York she introduced patch testing for industrial employees.

Cutaneous paraneoplastic syndromes Ollendorff Curth was first to establish a set of criteria required to suspect a cancer when new skin signs appeared. She had initially postulated these characteristics whilst in Berlin, and continued to adapt them. In 1968 she categorized acanthosis nigricans into four types: malignant, benign, syndromic, and pseudo types. It has since been reclassified by several others.

Death Ollendorff Curth died on 17 June 1982, from Alzheimer's disease.

Selected publications "Ein Fall von Dermatofibrosis lenticularis disseminata und Osteopathia condensans disseminata". Dermatologische Wochenschrift, Hamburg, 1928, 86: 257–262. (Co-author)

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