Vitiligo can have the most demoralizing effect on the lives of a vitiligo patient because this disfigurement can cover all parts of the body, including parts that are exposed. In fair-skinned, fair-haired patients, the white patches are less pronounced, but vitiligo seems to favour darker skinned people where its peculiar dark and light patchiness is hard or impossible to disguise. It spoils the looks of otherwise healthy people living healthy active lives and for this reason the search for a vitiligo cure has been going on all over the globe for at least the last three to four decades. Most treatment really is just that; it is treatment that has varying results and can hardly be summed up as a vitiligo cure, but it is worth investigating some of the many treatments and remedies to see how close the practitioners and medics come to being able to claim a vitiligo cure.
In Europe, German and UK biophysicists have discovered that hydrogen peroxide, a natural by-product of the human body builds up in larger quantities in hair follicles as we age and ultimately inhibits the processing of the color pigment, melanin. The team of researchers show that oxidation by hydrogen peroxide interferes with the production of melanin and inhibits other enzymes pointing to reasons for why hair turns gray with age, but also to future approaches for a vitiligo cure, though how this process is to be inhibited or reversed is not yet known.
Topical treatment with corticosteroid ointments using tacrolimus or clobetasol have proved successful according to results of clinical tests. Some 20 children were enrolled for a clinical trial and carefully monitored to produce results which suggest an almost 50% repigmentation over treated areas, with tacrolimus being favored over the slightly more effective clobetasol because it does not induce atrophy in the treated skin surface, but 50% does not enable the scientists to claim a vitiligo cure.
Topical psoralen and ultraviolet A is very effective as a vitiligo cure but only if the vitiligo covers less than 20% of the body. This treatment is performed using ultraviolet light once or twice weekly following a coating of psoralen. All treatments of vitiligo are time consuming and some discomfort must be assumed necessary, particularly during the MKT technique out of a London clinic. Small areas of healthy, melanin-rich tissue are taken from one area of a patient’s body, say the hip, to be processed to produce a pre-confluent mix of epidermal cells. The cells are applied to a previously abraded white patch where they attach to the prepared recipient site. While the treatment claims to be 100% effective, can this be described as a vitiligo cure? Patients start to see repigmentation in roughly 2 to 4 months and full benefit up to 6 months.
Claims of a vitiligo cure are being made by True herbals, the makers of Anti-Vitligo a herbal remedy for repigmenting skin. They claim a very high success rate worldwide with no division according to complexion, racial or ethnic factors. They do not, however, publish any results from clinical trials but seem to ask vitiligo sufferers to take the cure on the strength of unproven testimonials alone. While it is understood that the term ‘cure’ has different meanings for different people, most people in search of a vitiligo cure are looking for complete eradication of this skin disorder and a restoration of their appearance and dignity. Maybe this is why there are so many clinics, institutes and medical centres are offering what at times seem crazy solutions to this disfiguring anomaly. The vitilgo cure to end all cures must be the massaging of the vitiligo patient with ointment made from the human placenta, a treatment that claims to be 86% effective by the Cuban clinic selling this treatment.
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