I Have Vitiligo: Will My Children Have Vitiligo Too?

I have vitiligo: will my children have vitiligo  too? 

Key points 

• Be optimistic! If you have vitiligo, most probably your children will not have vitiligo. 

• Genetic component in vitiligo is weak and quite inconsistent. 

• If I have vitiligo, it is possible that all my relatives may have increased probability of developing vitiligo. 

• Identical twins have only 23% concordance of developing vitiligo: this means that the pure genetic component  of the disease is not really dominant. 

• Most cases of vitiligo are sporadic, thus it is not necessary that children of parents with vitiligo will also develop  vitiligo. 

• In less than 20% of vitiligo patients their close relatives may be affected. 

Answer 

Although most cases of vitiligo are sporadic,  familial clustering is not uncommon, and up to  20% of patients report on the affected relatives. In  whites, the lifetime frequency of vitiligo among  patients’ siblings is 6.1%, an 18-fold increase over  the studied population. The frequency of vitiligo  among first degree relatives in white, Indo -  Pakistani, and Hispanic populations is 7.1%, 6.1%,  and 4.8%, respectively, compared to an estimated  worldwide frequency of 0.14% to 2%. 

Epidemiologic studies indicate that vitiligo is  inherited in a multifactorial pattern. Identical  twins with identical DNA have only a 23%  concordance in developing vitiligo, suggesting a  significant non-genetic component in the disease. 

Familial clustering of generalized vitiligo with  other autoimmune diseases is a compelling  evidence for an autoimmune predisposition, a  common underlying genetic susceptibility to an  immunologic aberrancy. Among vitiligo patients,  20% report on thyroid disease (an 8-fold increase  over the general population), particularly  hypothyroidism. Similarly, there is an increased  frequency in other forms of autoimmune diseases  and autoimmune disorders of the endocrine  system (see later on).