Table 3. Evidence for and against viruses being associated with vitiligo.

Microbiome	Reference	Study Sample	Conclusion
Hepatitis C Virus (HCV)	Yamamoto and Nishioka [87]	5 cases of vitiligo	5 vitiligo patients with HCV seropositivity
	El-Serag et al. [85]	34,204 patients who were hospitalized with HCV (cases) and 136,816 randomly selected patients without HCV (controls) who were hospitalized during the time period.	HCV-infected patients had an approximate 2-fold increase in vitiligo as compared with controls.
	Podányi et al. [88]	1 vitiligo patient	A patient with vitiligo in the setting of HCV infection.
	Tsuboi et al. [75]	A 38-year-old man with vitiligo	Patient with active HCV infection.
	Ma et al. [79]	23,509 HCV-infected patients and 94,036 controls	Patients with HCV infection had a significantly increased risk of developing vitiligo in comparison with the control group.
	Fawzy et al. [89]	108 vitiligo patients	Adult-onset vitiligo was significantly associated with HCV-seroreactivity.
	Akbayir et al. [86]	20 patients (12 women and 8 men) with classical clinical and histologic features of vitiligo	The seroprevalence of HCV in vitiligo patients was not different from that of a control group.
	Arican et al. [95]	121 vitiligo patients (63 female and 58 male) and 114 ageand sex-matched control subjects	There was no direct association between HCV infection and vitiligo.
	Adiloglu et al. [96]	11 patients (six with bilateral and five with unilateral vitiligo)	There was no direct association between HCV infection and vitiligo.
Cytomegalovirus (CMV)	Grimes et al. [76]	29 patients with vitiligo and 22 control subjects	CMV DNA was identified in 38% of the patients studied, 21% had indeterminate results, whereas results were negative in all control subjects.
	Toker et al. [98]	20 vitiligo patients	Previous or concurrent CMV infections might trigger the pathogenetic mechanisms for vitiligo or induce the progression of the disease.
	Zhuang et al. [80]	56 progressive vitiligo patients and 26 healthy controls	The positive rate of anti-CMV IgM the anti-CMV IgM levels were significantly higher in vitiligo patients than that in healthy controls.
	Akar et al. [99]	34 patients with vitiligo, 15 healthy subjects and 15 patients with other dermatoses	CMV DNA sequences were not detected in the specimens of any patients with vitiligo or in the control subjects.
	Pichler et al. [105]	40 Austrian vitiligo patients	CMV DNA and CMV IgM antibodies could not be detected in the vitiligo patients.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)	Duvic et al. [110]	1,000 patients with AIDS-related complex (ARC) or AIDS	Five patients with HIV positive over a short period of time developed vitiligo.
	Antony et al. [77]	A 60-year-old male with vitiligo in association with HIV	Repigmentation occurred following initiation with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).
	Trope et al. [111]	1 vitiligo patient	Vitiligo immediately resulted in partial improvement after introduction of antiretroviral therapy.
	Tojo et al. [81]	A 56-year-old man with vitiligo	Vitiligo in association with HIV-infected.
	Xuan et al. [82]	A 26-year-old male with vitiligo	Vitiligo in association with HIV-infected.
Varicella-zoster virus (VZV)	Lewis et al. [113]	A case of vitiligo	A good melanin regeneration following anti-VZV treatments with valacyclovir.
	Gauthier et al. [114]	40 patients with Segmental vitiligo (SV), Control samples were obtained from three herpes zoster (HZ), and 10 generalized vitiligo lesions	A positive detection of VZV antigen was statistically correlated with the epidermis with recent SV and in the dermis with long-lasting SV.
Endogenous virus (EV)	Sreekumar et al. [116]	101 Smyth line (SL) chicken and 101 control (BL) chickens	The EV genes are associated in the induction of autoimmune vitiligo.
Herpes simplex types 1 and 2 (HSV-1/2)	Ribeiro et al. [117]	51 patients with vitiligo and 51 age- and gender-matched controls	Compared with controls, anti-herpes simplex types 1 and 2 (HSV-1/2) IgG was significantly more frequent in vitiligo patients.