Patients with Vitiligo Have a Lower Risk of Developing Serious Infections, New Poster Finds

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In a poster by AbbVie presented at the 2025 American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, real-world data was used to determine the prevalence of safety concerns and risk factors for patients with vitiligo.¹ Compared to matched controls, patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and patients with atopic dermatitis (AD), patients with vitiligo had a lower incidence of major adverse effects.

Background

Comorbidities such as major cardiovascular events (MACE), venous thromboembolism (VTE), nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC), serious infections, and other malignancies are potential safety concerns in patients treated with immunomodulatory therapies. The researchers believe that it is important to assess the underlying risk of these adverse outcomes in varying patient populations and inflammatory conditions. This claims analysis determined the risk of developing these in patients with vitiligo compared to matched controls, patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and patients with atopic dermatitis (AD).

Methods

The retrospective study took data from the Optum Clinformatics Data Mart database. All patients were aged ≥ 12 years with a clinical diagnosis of vitiligo, RA, or AD between January 2014 and March 2023. A majority of patients in all groups were white.Demographics regarding autoimmune conditions, medication use, and other risk factors were collected.

Additionally, all participants must have had ≥ 365 days of continuous healthcare plan enrollment before the cohort entry date. Patients with vitiligo were matched 1:3 with controls based on age, gender, calendar date, and inpatient versus outpatient visit type. The cohort entry date was defined as the first observed claim to meet disease criteria. From then, investigators evaluated the time at risk until an adverse event, end of data, disenrollment, or death occurred.

Outcome inclusion criteria was defined for each comorbidity as follows;

• MACE: myocardial infarction or stroke, inpatient hospitalization ≥1 day
• Serious infections: Inpatient hospitalization ≥1 day, infection diagnosis in the primary position
• Malignancy excluding NMSC: ≥2 claims from the same cancer family, ≥30 days apart
• NMSC: ≥2 claims, ≥30 days apart
• VTE: Inpatient or outpatient followed by anticoagulant use within 7 days

Results

After an analysis of the full dataset, which included over 99,000,000 participants, 30,130 patients with vitiligo, 90,388 matched controls, 940,447 patients with AD, and 209,954 patients with RA were identified. The RA group had the highest mean age of 61.1 years, followed by AD (54.7 years), control (54.6 years), and vitiligo (54.3 years). At least 60.7% of patients in each cohort had more than 1 cardiovascular risk factor.

Compared to the other groups, patients with vitiligo had a lower baseline prevalence of cardiovascular, VTE, and malignancy risk factors. Per 1000 person-years, incidence rates of MACE, serious infections, malignancy, NMSC, VTE, and inpatient only VTE in the vitiligo cohort were 10.78, 19.33, 14.67, 11.56, 4.71, and 2.85, respectively. Compared to the other groups, vitiligo had the lowest incidence rate in each condition category. Additionally, the adjusted incidence rate ratio (95% CI) for MACE, serious infections, malignancies, and VTE were significantly lower in patients with vitiligo compared to the RA (all < 0.87), AD (all < 0.93), and control groups (all < 0.85).

Conclusion

At the first observed vitiligo claim, patients with vitiligo had a lower prevalence of risk factors compared to the matched controls as well as patients with AD and RA. Additionally, the incidence rates of all measured adverse outcomes were lower among those in the vitiligo cohort compared to all of the other groups.

“Characterizing the underlying risk of adverse events among patients with vitiligo may help inform treatment benefit-risk assessments,” according to the authors.

Reference

1. King B, Eleftheriadou V, Bristow C, et al. A Comparison of the Risk of Major Cardiovascular Events, Venous Thromboembolism, Serious Infections, and Malignancies Among Patients With Vitiligo in the United States Using Real-World Data. Poster presented at the 2025 American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting. Orlando, Florida. March 7 to 11, 2025.