Melasma Clinical Features, Diagnosis, Epidemiology and Etiology: An Update Review

Abstract

Melasma is one of the commonest dermatological challenges that facing dermatologists in the whole world. Most of the previously published articles regarding melasma usually focused on its management and the newly discovered drugs; however, the understanding of the suspected etiology and the pathogenesis is very critical to treat this skin disorder in a correct manner. Therefore, this review is an attempt to do a comprehensive updating on the present understanding of the melasma epidemiology, etiology, its role in pregnant, post-menopausal women, and in males, besides its clinical features and diagnosis through searching in many scientific databases including EMBASE, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Pubmed Central (PMC), Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus. This review approaches recognizing the pathogenesis that can provide ideas to solve the therapeutic problems which connect to melasma. Therefore, this article is entirely established on previously performed studies so that no new studies on animal or human subjects were conducted by the author.

Keywords

• melanin
• melanocortin
• melasma