Evaluation of ovarian reserves in women suffering from an autoimmune disease vitiligo.

OBJECTIVE

In this study, we aimed to investigate whether vitiligo, an autoimmune disease, affects the ovarian reserves of women suffering from this disease.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

This case-control study included 27 vitiligo patients and 44 healthy participants with regular menstrual cycles. The total number of participants was 71. We conducted the study in a tertiary hospital between June 2022 and November 2022. We carried out the study after receiving the Ethics Committee Approval of the same institute, numbered KAEK/2022.04.88. Before the study, we obtained informed consent from all the participants included in our study. We complied with the Declaration of Helsinki at all stages of the study. We compared the study groups' demographic information, hormonal parameters, ovarian volumes, and antral follicle numbers. We performed an independent t-test to compare group means. We used SPSS for Windows 24.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) for the analyses. We considered the p-value lower than 0.05 to be statistically significant.

RESULTS

AMH values were 2.66±1.76 pmol/L in the control group and 1.61±0.86 pmol/L in the patient group. The total number of antral follicles was 10.25±2.13 (n) in the control group and 9.26±2.97 (n) in the study group. Ovarian volume was 11.57±1.37 ml in the control group and 10.63±1.96 ml in the study group. These results were statistically significantly different. We detected one premature ovarian failure (POI) in the study group. Although there was only one case, this difference between the groups was statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study has proven that the ovaries of women of reproductive age suffering from any disease with an autoimmune etiology are affected by this autoimmune process. Therefore, ovarian reserves should be evaluated in all fertile women with autoimmune diseases. Due to the evaluation, appropriate treatment and follow-up plans should be made in patients with infertility or premature ovarian failure (POF) risk.