Vitiligo: Melatonin is sometimes Reduced: a Treatment aid ?

Melatonin Concentration in the Blood of Vitiligo patients with stress in anamnesis
Tsiskarishvili NV et al
Poster – EADV Annual Meeting 2015 – Copenhagen, Denmark

Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the Pineal gland in the brain
-In addition to regulating sleep, it participates in body defense mechanisms and has antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties

In this study from Georgia 25 patients with vitiligo and stress were recruited – this amounted to 25 and out of those 10 had segmental vitiligo and 15 had non-segmental vitiligo (which includes Vitiligo vulgaris)

Blood levels of melatonin were measured

Results show that:
-for the patients with segmental vitiligo, blood melatonin levels were normal in 8 patients and slightly below normal
-but for non-segmental vitiligo: blood levels were below normal in all subjects and 2 patients, the level was very low.

Comments
-this is an interesting result, which displays deficiency of melatonin in vitiligo – this could translate into a therapeutical role for melatonin as a supplement…
…however
-the number of recruited patients is quite low and finalized posters are not peer-reviewed.
-it would be interesting how blood levels would evolve following melatonin administration and the parallel evolution of lesions in Vitiligo “vulgaris” (non segmental vitiligo)