Introduction and aim

Vitiligo is an acquired chronic pigmentation disorder. The etiopathogenesis is still not fully understood.
Aim: To research the correlation of ADAM proteins, shown to be associated with autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus, with vitiligo also considered to be an autoimmune disease.

Material and methods

The study included a patient group of 45 patients with the diagnosis of vitiligo and a control group of 45 healthy adults. The ADAM10 and ADAM17 protein serum levels and CXCL10 and thyroid autoantibody anti-TG and anti-TPO levels along with FT3, FT4, and TSH hormone levels were determined with the ELISA method. Statistical analysis of results was made with the SPSS 22.0 program.

Results

In vitiligo patients, the ADAM10 levels (2.34 ±0.80 pg/ml) were statistically significantly low compared to the control group (10.29 ±1.71 pg/ml) (p < 0.05), while the ADAM17 levels (128.51 ±14.37 pg/ml) were statistically significantly high compared to the control group (16.30 ±6.31 pg/ml) (p < 0.05). Additionally, the CXCL10 levels were observed to be statistically significantly higher in the patient group (275.11 ±62.36) than in the control group (107.08 ±33.12). Thyroid autoimmunity test results (anti-TG, anti-TPO, and TSH) were shown to be different to a statistically significant degree in the patient group compared to the control group (p < 0.001, p < 0.000, p = 0.003, respectively). Statistical analyses used the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney U test, and the independent T-test.

Conclusions

We obtained data that are important in terms of understanding the pathogenesis. ADAM10 and ADAM17 proteins may be new targets for future therapeutic approaches.