Dynamic thiol/disulphide homeostasis in vitiligo patients.

Introduction: Vitiligo is an acquired depigmentation disorder with melanocyte destruction.

Aim: To examine the thiol/disulphide balance in vitiligo patients and to compare the results with a healthy control group.

Material and methods: Thirty-two patients with vitiligo and 35 healthy individuals were included in the study. Native thiol, disulfide and total thiol levels in plasma were evaluated using a new and automated spectrophotometric method. Disulphide/total thiol, disulphide/native thiol and native thiol/total thiol levels were measured.

Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups when the patient and control groups were compared in terms of thiol/disulphide balance ( p > 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference in native thiol, disulphide and total thiol levels for vitiligo when compared with the control group ( p > 0.005).

Conclusions: In recent years, there have been numerous studies on the role of oxidative stress in the etiopathogenesis of vitiligo. In this study, we investigated in vitiligo patients whether thiol/disulphide balance is a new oxidative stress marker. The results were compared with a healthy control group. We measured the thiol/disulphide balance by a new method developed by Erel and Neselioglu. The serum thiol/disulphide levels were similar in the vitiligo patients and the control subjects, which indicated that the thiol/disulphide balance was not affected by vitiligo. We are of the opinion that new investigations to determine serum levels of thiol/disulphide may shed light on the possible roles of these molecules in vitiligo.