Journal of Clinical & Experimental Dermatology Research
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9554
ISSN: 2155-9554
Adil A Noaimi
University of Baghdad, Iraq
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Clin Exp Dermatol Res
Autoimmune diseases like pemphigus and lupus erythematosus are protective against skin tumors and infections although they are on prolonged drug induced immunosuppression and this is in contrast with kidney transplant patients, who are highly liable for skin malignancies like basal and squamous cell carcinomas and infections like bacterial, viral and fungal. This new hypothesis has encouraged us to go further and test this hypothesis on other autoimmune diseases like vitiligo. And from our daily clinical practice; we observed that patients with universal vitiligo have no freckles and nevi and no skin cancers, melanoma or Kaposi's sarcoma. These observations have supported by many studies that have carried out in our department. It has been found that P53 is high in vitiliginous areas when compared with normal adjacent skin and no increase in skin cancers. While in another studies, there are low frequency of infections, photodermatoses and skin tumors in patients with vitiligo compared with patients with kidney transplants. Also patients with severe vitiligo especially universal type have lower frequency of skin tumors and infections when compared with patients with mild vitiligo and control with apparently healthy individuals. The etiology behind these finding is difficult to elucidate but we can speculate that the high P53 in vitiligo skin and the possibility of more effective DNA repair of solar damage by vitiligo skin are responsible for this protection. While the importance of depletion of melanin stores in vitiligo patients remain query and need explanation. In conclusion, patients with vitiligo like any other autoimmune diseases have protection against skin tumors, photodermatoses and infections.
Email: adilnoaimi@yahoo.com