RESEARCH ARTICLE
Assessment of Vitamin D Status Among Cases with Pityriasis Alba
Wisam Majeed Kattoof1, *, Ahmed Abdulhussein Kawen2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 13
First Page: 19
Last Page: 22
Publisher ID: TODJ-13-19
DOI: 10.2174/1874372201913010019
Article History:
Received Date: 23/02/2019Revision Received Date: 27/03/2019
Acceptance Date: 11/04/2019
Electronic publication date: 30/04/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Pityriasis alba, is a common benign skin disease occurring predominantly among children, often on their face. Clinically, the spots of pityriasis alba are off-white in color, round with poorly defined margins that bear scanty fine scales on it. No specific cause of pityriasis alba has been identified . In this disease, the number of melanocytes declines and melanosomes reduce within melanocytes. Vitamin D exerts its effect via the vitamin D receptor on melanocytes, if intracellular Ca2+ level decreases, this leads to high levels of reduced thioredoxin this, in turn, inhibit tyrosinase activity with the inhibition of melanin synthesis. In addition, the apoptotic activity of melanocytes reduces by the active form of vitamin D.
Aim:
The study aimed to assess the status of vitamin D for patients with pityriasis alba.
Materials and Methods:
44 patient diagnosed with pityriasis alba were enrolled and the second group of 44 controls was involved in our study. Serum levels of circulating 25 (OH) D were measured.
Results:
None of the cases had sufficient serum level; the level ranged between 8.1-27.3 ng/ml. The patients had lower circulating vitamin D levels than controls.
Conclusion:
Our findings in the present study are significant, but further studies with large samples are needed to correlate the extent and severity of pityriasis alba with vitamin D deficiency.
