Vitiligo patients should supplement copper to ensure adequate nutrition of the human body, so as to better help treat vitiligo. The copper or ceruloplasmin in blood and skin of vitiligo patients is lower than that of healthy people. It is enough for tyrosinase to use copper ion as auxiliary group, and its activity is closely related to copper ion. As for the reasons for the decrease of copper and ceruloplasmin values, it may be related to nutritional disorders, metabolic disorders and genetic defects of copper in the body.
In addition, it was found that the content of sulfhydryl group in the damaged skin of vitiligo patients was higher than that of normal people, and the ratio of copper to glutathione in blood was lower. The increase of tryptophan pyrrolase activity also inhibited tyrosinase activity. Glutathione in human epidermal sulfhydryl compounds can inhibit tyrosinase activity by binding copper ions. Someone has measured the content of sulfhydryl groups in the skin. In 2002, the information bulletin of China Symposium on Dermatology and Venereal Diseases of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine showed that the cause of vitiligo was still very complicated. At present, there are trauma, mental fatigue, sun exposure, pregnancy and childbirth, heredity and so on. Some vitiligo patients are complicated with autoimmune diseases.
Among them, the main causes of vitiligo in children are trauma and heredity, and the onset age of vitiligo is mostly 5 ~ 10 years old. Ultrastructural observation of skin melanocytes and dermal nerve endings suggests that degeneration, deterioration and death of nerve endings may be the main reason for the decrease and disappearance of melanocytes. Tyrosinase is a key enzyme in melanin synthesis, which initiates the chain reaction of tyrosine to melanin biopolymer.