Symptoms
The most common form of pigment spots are age spots, also called lentigines seniles or lentigines solares (sun spots). As the name already reveals, age spots occur mainly at a higher age; mostly from the 40th and almost always from the 60th year of life. Typically, age spots are found on areas of skin that have been exposed to the sun for years, such as the forehead, cheeks, forearms or the back of the hand.
Here they manifest themselves as yellowish to dark brown spots. Mostly age spots are small and roundish, but can also be irregularly limited and up to several centimeters in size. Especially irregularly shaped or unevenly colored age spots must be examined by a doctor, as they often conceal black and in rare cases white skin cancer.
In principle, skin cancer does not develop from an age spot, but it can be very similar to an age spot and thus mask itself. For these reasons, newly occurring or changing pigment spots should always be clarified by a doctor. Patients with acne and skin allergies also tend to develop pigmentation more frequently.
This is due to their already irritated and irregularly colored skin. Prolonged exposure to the sun further damages the skin and impurities are more impressive than darker spots. Melasma is another type of pigment disorder that mainly affects young women of childbearing age and is caused by hormonal fluctuations.
This can be the case, for example, during pregnancy or when taking estrogen-containing preparations such as the contraceptive pill or hormone replacement therapy. (See: Pigment disorders caused by the contraceptive pill)Studies have shown that female sex hormones (estrogen and progesterone), which are released in high doses, especially during pregnancy, increase the activity of melanocytes in combination with the sun. This leads to overactivity of the melanocytes and thus to hyperpigmentation, i.e. increased darkening of the skin.
Typically, melasma is characterized by symmetrically distributed pigment spots on the forehead, temples and cheeks. These spots are usually irregular in shape and can merge into one another.After the end of pregnancy or after stopping taking the medication, a decrease in pigmentation may occur. In some cases, however, the melasma may remain forever.
One form of too light pigmentation disorders is vitiligo. This is a common genetic disorder that affects children and adolescents and is often associated with other autoimmune diseases such as Graves’ or Addison’s disease. Due to a genetic defect, individual or scattered light to white patches (hypopigmentation) of the skin appear, which may be irregularly shaped and distributed over the entire body. The therapy of choice for vitiligo is photo- or light therapy, which improves in 70% of cases.
