Eye Color Affect Risk of Skin Diseases

Eye color was found to be an indicator of whether a person is at high risk of serious skin disease or not. A study led by scientists at University of Colorado School of Medicine, United States indicated that people with blue eyes are less likely to have vitiligo. While people with brown eyes may have lower risk of suffering from melanoma.

Vitiligo is autoimmune skin disease where white-colored spots will appear all over the body. Although like white spot looks like disease, but vitiligo is not disease. Vitiligo is like skin disorders. While melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer.

The study was published online in Nature Genetics journal. In the research, scientist involving nearly 3,000 people non-Hispanic races of European descent with vitiligo. The identification result show that there are 13 new genes that affect the emergence of vitiligo.



Among patients with vitiligo, about 27 percent have blue eyes or gray, while 43 percent have brown eyes and 30 percent have green eyes, which are significantly different from distribution of the eye color of American Non-Hispanic races of European descent, in where about 52 percent of them have blue eyes / gray, 22 percent have 27 percent green eyes and has brown eyes.

Richard Spritz, MD, Human Medical Genetics and Genomics Program at CU School of Medicine, said the research is focused to see the vitiligo but also has implications for melanoma.

"Genetically, in some ways vitiligo and melanoma in contrast each other. Some of the same genetic variation makes one more likely to have vitiligo, while others are less likely to develop melanoma, and vice versa," said Spritz.

"Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease, in which person's immune system will attacks the normal pigment cells. We think that vitiligo represents excessive activity from normal process, where one of immune system try to figure the way out and destroy cells of melanoma cancer cells that still in early development," said Spritz.

People with vitiligo have higher risk of other autoimmune diseases, such as thyroid disease, diabetes type 1, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In fact, close relatives of patients with vitiligo are also at similar risk for the disease, even if they do not have vitiligo.

Spritz added, researchers have learned more about the genes associated with vitiligo and learn more about the genes involved in other autoimmune diseases as well as melanoma.