We reviewed the clinical and histological characteristics of the 44 cases of lupus erythematosus profundus (LEP) that have been encountered in our department. The female to male ratio was 4.5:1. The mean age of the females was 36 years, and the mean age of the males was 34 years. The most common sites were the face (38.4%) and upper limbs (26.0%). Even among the patients with LEP alone many of the positive patients had low antibody titers of 1:40 or 1:80. In 18 of the 44 cases SLE was complicated by LEP, and in those cases there was a tendency for LEP to develop during the course of SLE (11 cases). The important histological findings were lobular panniculitis associated with mucin deposition (32 cases) and a tendency to be associated with damage to the basal cell layer. In addition, the direct immunofluorescence test was positive in both the basement membrane (90.5%) and blood vessels (85.7%) in a high percentage of even the cases of LEP alone. Based on the above findings, LEP is a cutaneous variant of erythematosus, and the importance of the histological findings when making the diagnosis of LEP was reconfirmed.