Presarcopenia in Patients with Vitiligo: A Case Control Study

Sarcopenia is a muscle disease with significant morbidity and mortality. Vitiligo is a common autoimmune inflammatory disease which results from absence, deficiency, or dysfunction of melanocytes. Links between sarcopenia and autoimmune inflammatory processes were reported. However, no previous reports on association between sarcopenia and vitiligo were identified.

To assess presarcopenia in patients with vitiligo and to evaluate the effect of sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of vitiligo patients of sarcopenia if present.

This case control study included 63 patients with Vitiligo and 63 apparently healthy control group matched in age and gender. Sarcopenia was diagnosed by measuring the Appendicular Lean Mass Index. Cut off point required for sarcopenia is <6 for women and <7 for men. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were recorded. Sarcopenia was diagnosed according to the 2018 revised European consensus on definition and diagnosis of sarcopenia.

Mean age of vitiligo patients was 38.7 ± 14.0 years (range: 20-69 years) and for controls 39.9 ± 11.6 years (range: 20-70 years) (p=0.604). Female were 34 (54.0%) and 29 (46.0%) males, while in the controls 30 (47.6%) were females and 33 (52.4%) males (p=0.604). Presarcopenia was significantly higher in Vitiligo compared to controls. Vitiligo increases the risk of having presarcopenia by about five-fold (OR [95%CI]=4.706[1.26-17.61], p=0.013).Only BMI was significantly negatively correlated with presarcopenia. BMI decreases the risk of having presarcopenia by odds ratio of 0.837 (0.032). other baseline characteristics had no significant impact of presarcopenia in vitiligo (P model<0.01, R² =0.46 Accuracy= 0.57 AUC=0.92).

Vitiligo was significantly positively correlated with presarcopenia and increased the risk of presarcopenia by about five-fold.