الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Vitiligo is an acquired idiopathic cutaneous disease characterized by pearly white patches of variable shapes and sizes that have a tendency to increase in size centrifugally It usually begins in childhood or early adulthood but in most of the cases it occurs before 20 years of age and the incidence decreases with increasing age .It affects 0.5 to 2% of the world’s population.It shows no sex predilection but usually women are more affected than men because of their greater medical attention for cosmetic problems. The clinical picture consists of one or more well demarcated and white macules or patches progressing in size and number and they are generally asymptomatic. The diagnosis of vitiligo is mainly clinical by the presence of achromatic macules and normal skin coexisting in the same individual. Wood’s light which is a lamp of 35 nm causes a bluish white fluorescence in the affected skin. The etiology is still unknown so there are several hypotheses concerning the pathogenesis of vitiligo: genetic, autoimmune, neural, autocytotoxic, biochemical and oxidative stress theories In general Oxidative stress is caused by an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen and a biological system’s ability to readily detoxify the reactive intermediates or easily repair the resulting damage. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced as byproducts of melanogenesis in melanocytes, and controlled in the epidermis by several antioxidant enzymes such as catalase and glutathione peroxidase. Oxidative stress is thought to be the initial pathogenic event in melanocyte destruction. In oxidative stress, there is insufficient antioxidant activity leading to excessive accumulation of free radicals, which damage cellular compounds such as protein, carbohydrate, DNA and lipids. Vitiligo is accompanied by oxidative stress where there is overproduction of H2O2 that is cytotoxic to melanocytes by several mechanisms. The aim of the present work was to study the impact of some oxidative stress markers in the pathogenesis of vitiligo. The study was carried out on 20 vitiligo patients and 10 control with matched age and sex.Twenty patients (Group I) with vitiligo attending the dermatology outpatient clinic of the main Alexandria University Hospital.Ten control subjects (Group II) without any clinical evidence or family history of vitiligo or history of any autoimmune disease. Patients with the following criteria were excluded from the study:History of the use of any topical or systemic treatment for vitiligo at least for a previous month,active and passive smokers,history of intake of vitamins and anti-inflammatory drugs at least for a previous month ,history of chronic liver,kidney or cardiovascular disease,history of excessive exercise apart from daily life activities and pregnancy. Patients and control were arranged according to their skin type following Fitzpatrik classification .