Vitiligo is a loss of skin pigment that causes white spots or patches to appear on the skin. No one knows exactly why this happens, but it affects girls and guys of all races, many of them kids and teens.
Because vitiligo affects a person's appearance, it can be upsetting. But it isn't medically dangerous. It's not a form of skin cancer. It's not an infection like MRSA. And it's definitely not contagious, so you can't catch it from someone else. In fact, most of the people who have vitiligo are every bit as healthy as everyone else.
To explain vitiligo, it helps to know a bit about how skin gets its color in the first place. Skin color is determined by cells called melanocytes. They produce a pigment called melanin, which gives skin its color and helps protect it from the sun.
Skin color is determined not by how many melanocytes someone has (we're all born with a similar amount), but rather by how active the cells are. Dark-skinned people have cells that naturally produce a lot of melanin, while light-skinned people produce much less.
Sometimes, the skin suddenly stops producing melanin. At first, this might cause a spot that's lighter in color than the skin around it. But in time these white patches may spread and grow to cover a larger portion of the body. Sometimes these white patches spread quickly at first and then remain stable for years. Other times the spread is slower, occurring over a longer period of time.
Although vitiligo affects people of all races equally, the spots tend to be more noticeable on darker skin
