Melanocytic skin lesions and pregnancy: digital dermoscopy analysis

Very few studies have tried to clarify how pregnancy influences the morphology of pigmented skin lesions (PSL). Our purpose was to objectively determine, by digital dermoscopy analysis (DDA), any dermoscopic changes of acquired melanocitic nevi during pregnancy and after 1 year from delivery.

Thirty-five healthy pregnant women and 35 age-matched female controls were enrolled in the study. Nevi of pregnant women were analysed by DDA between 5 and 8 weeks of pregnancy, between 39 and 41 weeks of pregnancy and 12 months after delivery. Nevi of control women were analysed by DDA in a month of the year matching the period of recruitment of pregnant women and 21 months later.

Multivariate analysis of variance (manova) for repeated measures revealed that dermoscopic variables SKIN-GREEN-AVERAGE, SKIN-BLUE-AVERAGE and CONTRAST changed during pregnancy but returned to non-significant values after a year from delivery. The variable ENTROPY showed significant differences between initial evaluation and 1 year after delivery. Finally, the variable VARIANCE OF BORDER GRADIENT showed a significant difference between the first and the last evaluations, in both pregnant and control subjects.

The study showed that pregnancy leads to significant modifications in PSL, especially with regard to pigment network, globules and architectural order or disorder.