Vitiligo and Associated Autoimmune Disease: Retrospective Review of 300 Patients

Abstract

We found a significantly higher prevalence of hypothyroidism and pernicious anemia in vitiligo patients.

Circulating Autoantibodies and Autoimmune Comorbidities in Vitiligo Patients: A Multicenter Italian Study

“…Anemia perniciosa has been described with a prevalence ranging from 2.7 to 8.7% [16,34]. Sawicki et al [34] noticed a statistical difference in the prevalence of anemia perniciosa between their vitiligo patients and the general population in Canada. Autoimmune gastritis confirmed by histology was observed in 3.5% [24] and 15% [11] of cases of vitiligo in Italy, but data on the prevalence of this autoimmune disease in the general population are lacking.…”

“…Results of more recent studies on the association between vitiligo and disorders of the thyroid gland are reported in table 4 [6,7,9,10,12,16,17,18,23,24,28,33,34,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53]. Most surveys involving a control group showed a significant statistical difference in the prevalence of thyroid gland disorders between vitiligo patients and controls.…”

“…Only about half of the papers including a control group showed statistical differences between vitiligo patients and controls (table 4) [7,9,10,12,26,27,29,30,33]. Anemia perniciosa has been described with a prevalence ranging from 2.7 to 8.7% [16,34]. Sawicki et al [34] noticed a statistical difference in the prevalence of anemia perniciosa between their vitiligo patients and the general population in Canada.…”

Comorbidities in vitiligo: comprehensive review

“…Vitiligo is a common depigmentation disorder with multifactorial etiology, in which the melanocytes in skin, hair, and mucous membranes and in some cases eyes, inner ear, and leptomeninges, progressively lose their function or are destroyed …”

Diagnosis of torture after 32 years: Assessment of three alleged torture victims during the 1980 military coup in Turkey

“…However, due to the needs of the patient and the risk of retraumatization, it is decided against biopsy. Vitiligo might be a result of emotional stress, physical-chemical traumas and burning [26][27][28][29]. Since the lesion emerged after electrical torture, and there is no similar lesion on any part of the body the cable which was wound around penis during electric shock could also be considered to touch his scrotum and cause a burn mark and might be followed by loss of pigment cells.…”