WEDNESDAY, May 24, 2023 -- Patients with melasma have lower levels of serum vitamin D, according to research published in the May issue of SKIN.

Laura Andrews, from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, and colleagues conducted a retrospective review to examine the association between vitamin D and melasma using data from the Medical University of South Carolina Electronic Health Record system from January 2013 to May 2022. Calcidiol (25-hydroxyvitamin D) was measured and used as a surrogate for vitamin D. Overall, 840 of the 1,962 patients diagnosed with melasma had a serum calcidiol level measured following diagnosis (77 percent female; average age, 60.3 ± 19.2 years).

The researchers found that melasma patients were most often Caucasian followed by African American and Hispanic or Latino (81, 15, and 3 percent, respectively). The average serum calcidiol level was 33.8 ± 15.8 ng/mL for patients with melasma, which was significantly lower than that seen among 2,146 dermatology patients without melasma (36.8 ± 15.8 ng/mL).

"Our results suggest that patients with melasma may benefit from vitamin D supplementation," the authors write. "Larger, multicenter studies investigating the correlation between serum calcidiol and melasma, and future studies exploring changes in melasma symptoms following vitamin D supplementation, are warranted."