Vitiligo and Thyroid: What's the connection

Did you know that your thyroid can affect your vitiligo? If you are a vitiligo patient, it’s time for you to be aware of an associated medical condition – thyroid. So that you’re well prepared to deal with it.

What is vitiligo?

Vitiligo is an auto-immune disease where your skin loses melanin i.e. the pigment in your skin. This gives you discoloured patches on your face and the rest of your body. Among various skin conditions, this is a rather uncommon one and affects only 1% of the population globally. In India, the prevalence of vitiligo is 8.8% (Source: NCBI)

Fast facts about thyroid

• Thyroid is a gland that secrets a hormone which ensures that your body functions normally. The overproduction or underproduction of this hormone causes hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism respectively.
• Over 42 million people in India suffer from thyroid disease. (Source: NCBI)

How are vitiligo and thyroid related?

The most direct link between vitiligo and thyroid is simple, the autoimmunity. An auto-immune disease is when your immune system mistakes certain cells in your body to be foreign invaders. It then creates antibodies to attack and get rid of these cells. With both vitiligo and thyroid being auto-immune diseases they go through a similar process.

Substantially, vitiligo can be a hereditary condition. Many times, the genes associated with your autoimmune diseases like vitiligo are the exact same genes also responsible for causing other autoimmune diseases as well. In the case of this association between vitiligo and auto-immune thyroid disease, the shared genes are likely to be the culprit. Thyroid is the most prevalent autoimmune disease among vitiligo patients. (Researched by the international team of researchers from the University of Colorado)

There are many studies conducted to understand this relationship between vitiligo and thyroid. In a recent study, researchers evaluated 48 articles to understand this thyroid-vitiligo relationship better. These studies concluded that 77 out of 79 vitiligo patients were found with the presence of anti-thyroid hormones and 14.3% of vitiligo patients had thyroid. Vice versa, the prevalence of vitiligo among thyroid patients was 2.7% to 7%. (Source: NCBI)

Vitiligo and thyroid in children

Every child or adolescent with vitiligo is advised to get the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone Test (TSH test) done as well. 260 children with vitiligo underwent various TSH test. The results indicated that 6.2% of them had auto-immune thyroid disease which is a greater figure than that seen among children without vitiligo. Moreover, 10.5% of patients had elevated levels of antithyroid antibodies. This doesn’t disturb the thyroid hormone. However, this condition comes with an increased risk of developing thyroid in the near future.  (Source: NCBI)