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Patients with vitiligo, alopecia areata at increased risk for atopic dermatitis

Patients with vitiligo, especially early-onset disease, or alopecia areata had a significantly increased risk for atopic dermatitis, according to recently published study results.

Girish C. Mohan, MD, and Jonathan I. Silverberg, MD, PhD, MPH, conducted a literature search of Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar and 12 additional journals from 1946 to April 5, 2014, to compare the prevalence of atopic dermatitis (AD) among patients with either vitiligo or alopecia areata (AA) and those without either disorder. Search terms included “atopic dermatitis, vitiligo, eczema” and “alopecia areata” in various combinations. Selection criteria included “observational studies that compared the prevalence of AD among patients with and without vitiligo or AA.”

Jonathan I. Silverberg

The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and Methodological Evaluation of Observational Research checklist was used to measure quality of evidence, and a meta-analysis of studies and subset analyses were performed.

There were 16 studies of vitiligo and 17 studies of AA included in the final review. Through a pooled analysis that included control patients without vitiligo and control patients without AA, patients with vitiligo or AA were found to have a significantly higher odds of AD than control patients, according to the researchers.

There were higher odds of AD in patients younger than 12 years with early-onset vitiligo compared with patients with late-onset vitiligo, according to pooled analysis of three studies. Patients with alopecia totalis or alopecia universalis had higher odds of AD when compared with patients with patchy alopecia, according to pooled analysis of four studies.

Disclosure: The authors have no relevant financial disclosures.