Arwa Al Meslat
English 211
September 10, 2014
Ms. Lindsay Gail O`Dunn
Vitiligo Have you ever saw someone with white spots?. This may occur because of a skin disease. There is a large number of skin diseases related to the change of the skin color like vitiligo. It is well known that many people do not have enough information about vitiligo, or about its symptoms. In the world population there is 1 of 200 suffers from vitiligo, which means 40 million people, or about 1-2% from the world population*. Furthermore, vitiligo is equally separated between males and females in all age groups. Also, for most of the patients the disease will be developed when the patient is 10 to 30 years old, and by 40 it will stop developing. Moreover, vitiligo
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These spots appear when the melanocytes (skin cells that give the skin its pigment) get destroyed or weakening. Some researchers like to call the disease “the rare disease”. In addition, vitiligo can affect any skin tone, yet it may not be obvious in light skin tones. The Latin word vitiligo comes from “viti” means mark or blemish, and “ligo” means cause or bind. Moreover, this disease have two main types: segmental vitiligo and non-segmental vitiligo. Furthermore, when people pronounce vitiligo for the first time they pronounce it incorrectly. The correct way to pronounce it is like “little I go”, but replacing the letter “L” with “V” giving the words “vittile I go”. In brief, vitiligo is a worldwide disease, and large number of people are suffering from …show more content…
The most important thing is to protect the skin from the sun. Since the skin loss its pigment, it will get sunburns easily when exposed to sun. Because the skin lost its natural protections like melanin, the skin will not be able to protect its self from harmful sun rays. Especially after treatments the skin is no longer strong or thick, so any amount of sun light will be bad for the patient’s skin. Therefore, applying sun block to protect the skin is necessary even in rooms with large amount of sun light in it. since the skin lost its pigment cells, melanocytes and melanin, vitiligo patients have a higher risk of getting skin cancer. Also, some tanning beds ,which some patients use as a treatmeant, will higher the risk of getting melanoma (a deadly skin cancer). To summarize, protecting the skin from sun light for vitiligo patients is