COMPARISON OF THE SMOKING PREVALENCE IN PATIENTS WITH VITILIGO, OTHER SKIN DISEASES AND GENERAL POPULATION

Vitiligo is an acquired chronic skin disease which shows itself as depigmented
areas. Among the theories about the etiology of vitiligo, autoimmunity theory is the most accepted.
One of the issues raised is whether smoking could have an influence on the vitiligo or not. This study
was conducted to investigate the effects of smoking on the disease.
Materials and Methods: The study population consisted of 100 patients with vitiligo and two control
groups of 100 patients with non-vitiligo skin problems and 100 normal individuals. Individual
interviews were completed according to the questionnaire of smoking (active / passive / non smoker).
Using the instrument of detecting CO levels in the breath, PPM2 and CoHb of the participants in the
study and control groups were recorded.
Results: In terms of distribution of smokers among three studied groups, in people with vitiligo 10
cases were smokers (10%), 24 cases were exposed to cigarette smoke (24%) and 66 cases were nonsmokers
(66%) and in patients with other skin diseases, 13 cases were smokers (13%), 14 cases were
exposed to cigarette smoke (14%) and 73 cases were non-smokers (73%). Healthy individuals were 10
smokers (10%), 16 cases were exposed to cigarette smoke (16%) and 74 cases were non-smokers
(74%) and by chi-square with p=0.38 there was no significant difference among three studied groups
based on smoking.
Conclusions: Based on the results of our study, there was no significant difference between three
groups considering smoking history