Is poliosis the same as vitiligo?

Last Updated on 16th May 2024 by Caroline Haye

If, like me, you are always keen to learn as much about vitiligo as you possibly can, you will have done a lot of research and collected a wealth of medical, personal and general information on the subject. And, in the course of your reading, you may have come across the word poliosis. But, unless you have a medical background or first-hand experience of it yourself, you may not know what it means. If, on the other hand, you do already know, you may still be wondering is poliosis the same as vitiligo? Well, I’m guessing you have a good understanding of what vitiligo is. But what do you know about poliosis?

What exactly is poliosis?

Put simply, poliosis is an apparently random reduction or absence of melanin pigment in the bulbs of some hair follicles, typically resulting in one or more patches of white hair. These can occur on the scalp or any other hairy part of the body, including brows and lashes. So, in common with vitiligo, poliosis involves a loss of normal function in the melanocytes (our pigment-producing cells). However, the two terms are not synonymous.

Poliosis is a symptom

Without getting bogged down in a level of medical detail that I am not qualified to attempt, poliosis is really a symptom rather than a disease. In fact, is is a fairly common symptom of vitiligo, which is why readers of this blog are likely to have heard of it. (Not everyone with vitiligo will experience a loss of hair colour. But an early sign in my own case was a scattering of white eyelashes. And it seems to me that the hair on my head also began greying sooner than it might have done if I had not had a history of vitiligo.)

Poliosis can also be a sign of other conditions too. Some of these are genetic (i.e. you are born with them). And others, including vitiligo, are acquired (i.e. you develop them)… Although there seems to be both a genetic and an environmental component to many of these conditions, vitiligo included. But that is where the science starts to get more complicated. So I’ll stick to those two broad categories for the sake of simplicity.

Genetic and acquired conditions involving poliosis

Genetic conditions that can involve poliosis include piebaldism [you may also want to check out my blog on difference between vitiligo and piebaldism] and tuberous sclerosis. Also, several other rare syndromes like Waardenburg syndrome, Marfan syndrome, Tietze syndrome, prolidase deficiency and neurofibromatosis type 1.

Acquired conditions that may involve poliosis include relatively common conditions like halo naevus, alopecia areata [see Does vitiligo cause hair loss] and, of course, vitiligo. Plus some rare syndromes like Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease, Alezzandrini syndrome and trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia. And, in addition to these diseases, poliosis can be a sign of melanoma or even a result of certain medications.  

What poliosis, vitiligo and all these conditions have in common

To summarise, poliosis is a relatively common symptom of vitiligo. But it is not the same thing as vitiligo. It can be a sign of many other disorders too. Some of these conditions fall into the category of autoimmune diseases and syndromes. Many are genetic and others are the result of a gradual disease process or environmental trigger. Some are likely a mixture of both.

What all of these conditions, vitiligo included, have in common is that they all involve damage to the cells that produce melanin. In vitiligo, this damage may also impact those physiological functions and systems that rely on melanocytes in order to perform other tasks in the body. This is because these clever little pigment-producing cells are responsible for far more than simply supplying colour to our skin and hair. They play a role in the function of our eyes and ears, among numerous other organs too. [More on the secret life of melanocytes here.] But, whether having poliosis alone, or any of the other conditions listed above, might carry a similar risk is not a subject I have delved into. So if anyone can shed light on that question, please feel free to leave a comment below.

I hope that this post has been helpful and informative and that the next time you see the word poliosis in your ramblings around the convoluted corridors of the internet it will have given you some useful context for your ongoing research.

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