Investigators in France developed and validated a dermatologic-specific burden score called the Vitiligo Impact Treatment Score (VIT) in October 2021. The investigators believed that VIT has the potential to be used in clinical practice as a validated global score and is easy to calculate to identify whether someone with vitiligo is overwhelmed by their treatment or not. Investigators believe that people with a VITs score above 48.5 Patient Acceptable Symptom State (PASS) are at risk of being overwhelmed by oral, phototherapeutic, or topical treatment of vitiligo. FYI – PASS has been defined as the highest level of symptom beyond which patients consider themselves well.
The french investigators’ team led by Julien Senechal, MD, PhD, Service de Dermatologie, Centre de Référence des Maladies Rares de la Peau, Hôpital Saint André, CHU de Bordeaux believe the new instrument could be generalized to other chronic inflammatory skin diseases in the future.
The Method behind Vitiligo Impact Treatment Score
The score that is developed to validate the measurement of the burden of treatment in vitiligo patients was tested in a large vitiligo population through a questionnaire that can be used to develop patient-centered approaches to vitiligo management, to find a balance between treatment benefit and burden.
The questionnaire was part of the framework of an ongoing e-cohort project called ComPare. In it, the investigators aimed to ask each participant with vitiligo to answer an online survey with open-ended questions that explored the different aspects of living with the skin condition of vitiligo. By the end of the project, a 19-item questionnaire was developed that assessed the burden of treatment in patients with vitiligo through four key pertinent dimensions, namely finding a doctor, topical treatments, light treatment, and treatment’s impact on outdoor activities and photoprotection.
The validity of the instrument was assessed by comparing the instrument’s score to the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), Vitiligo Impact Patient score (VIPS), and Treatment Burden Questionnaire (TBQ) scores.