Background: Autoimmune diseases like pemphigus and systemic lupus erythematosus are protective\nagainst skin malignancies like basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. Objective:\nAs vitiligo is an autoimmune diseases, the aim of the present work is to record the frequency of all\nbenign and malignant skin tumors among patients with different severity of vitiligo and to be\ncompared with the skin tumors in healthy control. Patients and Methods: This is a case series, descriptive\nstudy done in the Department of Dermatologyââ?¬â?Baghdad Teaching Hospital, Baghdad,\nIraq, during the period from May 2014-May 2015. History was taken from each patient with vitiligo\nregarding age, gender, duration, personal and family history of vitiligo and other autoimmune\ndiseases such as diabetes mellitus, thyroid dysfunction, and alopecia areata. Patients were assessed\nfor past and present history of photodermatosis and any skin cancers. Healthy control was\nconsidered. Results: Three hundred and fifty patients with vitiligo were included in this study: 50\npatients with universal vitiligo, 100 patients with generalized vitiligo, and 200 patients with localized\nvitiligo as well as 500 subjects as a healthy control. The ages of all studied subjects ranged\nbetween 31 and 77 years. Twenty four(48%) patients with universal vitiligo were males and 26\n(52%) were females; 49(49%) patients with generalized vitiligo were males and 51(51%) were\nfemales; 101(50.5%) patients with localized vitiligo were males and 99(49.5%) were females and\n235(47%) of control were males and 265(53%) were females. All skin tumors were seen to be\nhigh in healthy subjects and lower or absent in patients with vitiligo. Also patients with mild vitiligo\nhad a higher frequency of skin tumors including benign and malignant than patients with severe\nvitiligo especially in patients with universal vitiligo. In addition, no photosensitivity or actinic\nreticuloid was detected in patients with vitiligo. Conclusions: Vitiligo especially generalized and\nuniversal type as an autoimmune disease had a protective action against photodamage, photosen-sitivity and skin tumors whether benign or malignant.
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