Are mites responsible for vitiligo?

Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease that causes skin discoloration and affects between 0.5% and 1% of the population, according to the Canadian Dermatology Patient Association. Although the initial cause of vitiligo is unknown, mechanical, psychological or physiological stress can precede the onset of the disease—and increasingly it's suspected certain environmental factors may come into play. This is particularly the case for mites. Since these cause allergies, researchers have suspected that these organisms may cause abnormalities in the immune system. “Mites produce a large number of proteases, proteins that break down other proteins. However, the detachment of melanocytes from the skin of patients involves the destruction of E cadherins, proteins which allow cells to adhere to each other,” said Méri Tulic, a researcher who participated in the study, in a press release from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France. Read: Does methotrexate increase the risk of skin cancer? To test the hypothesis of the role of mites in vitiligo, researchers took epidermis samples from patients with the disease to compare them to samples from patients without the disease. They subsequently exposed all samples to mites. In all samples, exposure to mites caused the secretion of chemokines and cytokines, or inflammation molecules. Exposure also increased the concentration of proteases. Additionally, the researchers found that the higher the quantity of mites used, the higher the concentrations of proteases and cytokines. “Molecular analyses confirmed that a mite protease called Der p1 destroys E cadherin in the epidermis and causes melanocytes to detach. And if this phenomenon was observed in all the samples, it was approximately one hundred times more significant in those taken from patients with vitiligo than with samples from non-diseased skin,” said Tulic. Thus, certain skins have an increased susceptibility to dust mites and a more reactive immune system. According to Tulic, this shows how an environmental factor can contribute to vitiligo flare-ups and worsening of the disease. However, more research is needed to verify whether people allergic to dust mites are more vulnerable to vitiligo and severe forms of the disease. Read: A ‘next-generation’ topical cream for plaque psoriasis

Are mites responsible for vitiligo?

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