
#Vitiligo universalis skin#
Medicines or medicated skin creams, such as corticosteroids or a calcineurin inhibitor, which may be able to return color to the white patches of skin. While rare, vitiligo can also affect a person’s eyesight. If vitiligo affects the eyes, your eye color could change. If the body attacks melanocytes in the inner ear, a person can have hearing loss. When a person has vitiligo, the body attacks melanocytes. Melanocytes are the cells that give skin, hair, and eyes their color. Others see a streak of white hair on their head. Some people develop loss of color on part (or all) of an eyelash or eyebrow. Eyelash, eyebrow, or section of hair on the scalp turns white. Vitiligo can also cause a person’s hair to turn prematurely gray, as shown in picture B. When vitiligo appears on the skin, the hair in that area can turn white, as shown in picture A. Vitiligo can cause a person’s hair to lose its color. Otherwise, the spots and patches rarely cause discomfort. When vitiligo is actively spreading, patches may feel itchy. That’s why sun protection is so important. Sunburns can also trigger vitiligo, causing it to spread. Skin that’s lost pigment is more sensitive to sunlight, so it sunburns quickly. Vitiligo can cause loss of color in the mouth, on the lips, around the mouth, around the nose, or inside the nose. Lighter patches inside your mouth or nose. Once vitiligo is no longer active, the patches turn completely white, as shown here. When vitiligo is actively destroying cells that give a person’s skin its color, the patches tend to be pink or tricolor (causing a zone of tan skin between a person’s natural skin color and the white vitiligo).
Vitiligo can appear anywhere on a person’s skin, including the genitals. Because these cells give the skin its color, spots and patches of lighter skin appear.
When a person has vitiligo, cells that make pigment are damaged.