Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology (Dec 2023)
A New Assessment Method of Vitiligo by Combination of Dermoscopy and Reflectance Confocal Microscopy
Abstract
Hui-Fen Wang, Chun-You Wang, Xiao-Fang Zhou, Xiang-Fen Deng, Hui Huang, Juan Wang, Xue-Qin Chen, Zhi-Fang Zhai Department of Dermatology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Army Medical University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Zhi-Fang Zhai, Department of Dermatology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Army Medical University, Gaotanyan Street No. 30, Shapignba District, Chongqing, 400038, People’s Republic of China, +86 023 6876 6338, Email [email protected]: The aim is to investigate the application value of dermoscopy combined with reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) in assessing vitiligo disease activity and treatment response.Patients and Methods: We enrolled 279 patients with vitiligo and evaluated the disease activity by Vitiligo Disease Activity (VIDA) score, dermoscopy, RCM and dermoscopy combined with RCM respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of different assessment techniques were compared with VIDA score by the differences and consistency. The different characteristics of dermoscopy and RCM with different treatment responses were also analyzed.Results: The results showed that the sensitivity and specificity of dermoscopy combined RCM were higher than RCM or dermoscopy alone (P values less than 0.05). In the repigmentation process, leukotrichia, pigment network absent and perilesional hyperpigmentation under dermoscopy at the baseline suggested a poor treatment response, while the incompletely disappearing pigment rings under RCM and perifollicular hyperpigmentation under dermoscopy indicated a good treatment response. We also found the proportion of patients with telangiectasia, increased pigment at the lesions and around the hair follicles was significantly higher in the good treatment response group than that in the poor one by dermoscopy (χ 2 = 4.423, 32.471, 4.348, P = 0.035 0.000, 0.037) and by RCM the proportion of patients with both increased pigment granules and dendritic melanocytes in the good treatment response group was higher than that in the poor one (χ 2 = 38.215, 5.283, P = 0.000, 0.022, respectively).Conclusion: With the higher sensitivity and specificity than dermoscopy or RCM alone, a combination of dermoscopy and RCM may be a new more accurate measure to assess the vitiligo disease activity and the treatment response.Keywords: vitiligo, dermoscopy, reflectance confocal microscopy, the disease activity, the treatment response
