Vitiligo: An Autoimmune Disease

Vitiligo is a chronic skin disorder that affects the pigmentation of the skin. Pigment is what gives the skin color and is produced by cells called melanocytes. In the disorder, the body attacks the melanocytes resulting in the loss of color in patchy areas. When the color is lost, the affected area becomes a white irregular shaped patch on the outer layer of the skin. Vitiligo can affect a very small portion of the body or affect up to fifty percent of the skin. The most common areas of the body affected by the disorder include the hands, feet, arms, face and sometimes the genitalia. This illness can be treated but it cannot be cured

The skin disorders that might results from hereditary, congenital, or acquired pathological processes are ichthyosis, bullous diseases, chronic infections of the skin, dermatitis, hiradenitis suppurativa, genetic photosensitivity disorders, and burns.

Vitiligo is a continual and long term skin problem that causes white depigmentation on your skin. The white patches appear due to melanocytes within the skin dying off. Melanocytes are cells that reproduce causing pigment, if you lack melanocytes then you will have white patches. Melanin, which gives your skin color also protect you from the sun’s UV rays. Vitiligo affects people differently; there is not an exact place where you can have it. You can have it all over your body, hair, mouth, and even eyes.

Melanin is an important part of the body that is produced by melanocytes. Melanin gives the hair, skin, and eyes color as well as protects the body from the ultra violet rays that radiate from the sun. The amount of melanin in the body determines the complexion of the skin. Vitiligo occurs when these important melanocytes die in patches around the body. This differs from the aging process, when melanocytes stop producing melanin which results in white or gray hair. Vitiligo is a non-contagious, non-life-threatening condition which causes a discoloration of the skin that appears over time, but does not go away. Most people say this condition is painless, but some report itching, and pain. This condition affects millions of people around the world, proportionately between men and women, and can be present in any given race, although it is more apparent in darker skin

Vitiligo is an auto-immune disease where melanocytes, the cells that make pigment in the skin, are destroyed (Vora, Patel, Chaudhary, Mehta & Pilani, 2014). It is characterized clinically by totally white patches of skin, also known as lesions, appearing primarily on visible areas of the body, including face and hands (Osman, Elkordufani & Abdullah, 2009). In very rare cases vitiligo is accompanied by itching or other somatic symptoms but gradual discoloration is generally its only physical symptom (Schmid-Ott et al., 2007). The patches develop unpredictably and while there is a genetic component to vitiligo, race and age do not affect the incidence of the disease (Gupta, Sreenivas, Mehta, Khaitan & Ramam,

Also known as an autoimmune disease, that attacks the body that destroys the melanocytes in the skin, or they will destroy themselves. Melanin is an important pigment that gives the skin its main color.

Vitiligo has always sparked my interest because the causes behind this rare appearance are bewildering. Vitiligo causes an individual to loose pigment in his or her skin, but is not deadly. Loss of pigment is caused when melanocytes die. Oddly, vitiligo showcases no other symptoms and researchers are baffled by why the cells die. Although there may be a correlation between non-segmental vitiligo and auto immune diseases. Diagnoses of vitiligo vary and display in different parts of the body such as the hair, eyes, mouth and skin. Two types of vitiligo exist and each has a different severity. Segmental targets a specific part of the body such as a leg, arm or face and begins at an early age. Eventually segmental vitiligo stops spreading after

Vitiligo is a disease of the Integumentary system that causes white patches on the skin, these patches are caused by the absence of melanin. Melanin is the skin pigment that gives you color; therefore, these patches are much more noticeable it darker skinned people. Vitiligo only affects about 1%-2% of the population. Most people who have this condition have it for a lifetime, although there are treatments that may help.

Vitiligo affects people of all skin types, but it may be more noticeable in people with darker skin.

What defines who we are: is it where we come from, who our parents are, how much money we have, what we look like, or is it what we do with our lives? The truth is, the answer to this question is very complex, and there is no one true answer, but when looking from the eyes of America one of the major contributing factors to this is race. In the world that we live, being black has become known as something negative, and being white is become what the world looks at as the beauty, intelligence, and the beginning of humanity. This thought is known as white supremacy. There are many contributing factors to this statement such as, slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the newest of them all, colorism. All the events of the past play a role in how our society interacts and how blacks interact with each other. Over time the development of the term Colorism has developed unknowingly in the psyche of the colored people of the world, but in order to understand why people feel this way about their self you have to know all the components that go into it.

Melasma Treatment Options that Work Melasma is a common skin condition that causes skin discoloration on the face. Statistics from the American Academy of Dermatology show that the disease affects more than 6 million Americans. Of those afflicted by the condition, 90% are women.

have white patches in the skin. There is no real cause of vitiligo known at this time (Sahni,

disease is disorder in the skin . you should keep it health you can . This

Vitiligo is a skin disease where an individual loses their pigmentation when the pigment producing cells are attacked and destroyed (AOCD, n.d.). Vitiligo is also known to be an auto-immune disorder where certain white blood cells direct the destruction of the melanocyte (AOCD, n.d.). Melanocytes are cells that give us our skin and hair color (AAOD, n.d.). Vitiligo affects any individual no matter their ethnic origin or sex. Individuals often notice that they have the skin disease before they reached the age of 20 which is often notice on individuals with darker skin. Common areas that vitiligo would normally start would be on an individual’s hands, feet, or face (AOCD, n.d.).

Another way this technology can be used is breeding out certain genetic abilities. For example, what if as a culture, we decide that darker skinned people are better, and we began to genetically modify our children to have darker skin? What if we breed out fairer skin people in our gene pool? Then on that same note, a planetary disaster occurs where we have darker skies and less sunlight. We could, inadvertently, breed ourselves to extinction because fairer skinned people would be far more adaptive to this disaster. Fair skin people produce more vitamin D in less sunlight than darker skinned individuals. These similar circumstances has already occurred with our selection breeding of crops. Disease outbreaks that exploited a weakness in the