Vitiligo and skin cancer: what's the link?

It is well established that ultraviolet (UV) radiation is one of the major risk factors for the development of skin cancer. It is therefore consistent to think that in vitiligo plaques completely devoid of melanin and melanocytes, cellular DNA without its natural protector can only be more vulnerable to UV aggression. We logically expect to have a high incidence of skin cancer in vitiligo patients. To our astonishment, the literature tends rather towards the hypothesis that there is no increase in this risk. We report a new case of multiple actinic keratoses, Bowen’s disease and squamous cell carcinoma on the sun-exposed areas in a 67 year old man with universal vitiligo. We also conducted a literature review by collecting all similar cases as well as cohorts, meta-analyses and literature reviews on the issue, to determine if this debate is still ongoing.