Auto-immune skin diseases in animals: time to reclassify and review after 40 years

It has been more than 40 years since the dual descriptions of canine pemphigus vulgaris. Over the ensuing four decades, the reports of—mostly canine—novel autoimmune skin diseases (AISDs) have progressed in successive waves separated by long periods of quiescence. This Editorial introduces a series of comprehensive review papers on the various canine and feline AISDs. This collection of articles aims at remediating the current veterinary literature deficiency on this topic by summarizing the key historical, clinical, histological, immunological and treatment characteristics of animal AISDs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12917-018-1477-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.