Abstract

Vitiligo or leukoderma is a chronic skin condition that causes loss of pigment due to destruction of melanocytes, resulting in irregular pale patches of skin. Vitiligo is polygenic disease and associated with autoimmunity. Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) is capable of modulating cutaneous neurogenic inflammation. An insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of a 287-base pair repetitive sequence in intron 16 of the ACE gene was reported to have been associated with autoimmunity and with the development of vitiligo. In our study, the distribution of ACE gene I/D genotype was investigated in a population of 186 South Indian vitiligo patients and 201 healthy controls using polymerase chain reaction genotyping method. The ACE genotype and allele frequency (χ² = 9.576, P= 0.008)(χ² = 10.68, P = 0.001) were significantly different between vitiligo patients and healthy controls. However there was no significant difference between the segmental and non-segmental vitiligo(χ² = 0.182, P = 0.91) detected in ACE gene genotype distribution .This study suggests that the ACE genepolymorphism confers susceptibility to vitiligo.

Key words: Angiotensin converting enzyme, gene polymorphism, vitiligo, autoimmunity