John E. Harris, MD, on What Autoimmune Specialists Should Know About Vitiligo

Did you know that World Vitiligo Day is June 25? John E. Harris, MD, PhD, shares what autoimmune specialists should know about vitiligo and how it can negatively impact patient quality of life due to its visible dyspigmentation. Dr Harris is the chair of dermatology, founding director of the Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center, and founding director of the Autoimmune Therapeutics Institute at UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA.

Transcript

Dr Harris: Vitiligo's really important. Maybe not so much anymore, which is great news, but in the past, it's been dismissed. People say, "Oh, vitiligo. It can't be that big a deal. It causes white spots."

One important point is that vitiligo has been around for thousands of years. In the Iron Age India, there were medical texts called Rig Veda and Atharvaveda written in 1400 BC that mention vitiligo. They say if you have vitiligo, you can't get married and nobody in your family can get married. That's 3,400 years old from text that this stigma has been around. It's deeply engrained. It's going to take a long time to get rid of that.

We certainly need to understand the struggle that patients have with their vitiligo, the stigma that they receive. Unlike many skin diseases, it likes the face and the hands the most. Very difficult to hide that, so they're a walking billboard for their disease.

We need to appreciate that and understand the importance of developing treatments for them and understanding what they're going through.