SKIN LIGHTENING AND CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE: A TALE OR A FACT?

Main Article Content

Ogochukwu okoye

Keywords

Abstract

Introduction: Skin-lightening (a.k.a. bleaching or whitening) agents have the potential of causing adverse health effects, including skin diseases, high blood pressure, and kidney disease. Nigerian women have the highest rate (77%) of skin lightening practice, while almost 40% of people in countries of Asia use these products. This paper is a systematic review aimed at appraising the evidence on the association of topical skin bleaching agents and CKD in humans.


Materials and Methods: References of relevant articles from the earliest record to October 2019 were obtained following a search of Pubmed, HINARI, and GOOGLE Scholar. Search terms such as skin lightening, skin bleaching, skin whitening, cosmetics were combined with kidney-related terms like kidney, kidney disease, renal, CKD, kidney failure, and renal failure.


Results: Mercury was the specified skin-lightening agent in 13 of the 16 studies, while others did not specify the chemical agent. The most frequent histopathologic patterns of glomerular disease associated with topical application of mercury were MCD (6/11) and MN (6/11). Seven out of 11 studies reported remission after withdrawal of mercurial cosmetic and use of a chelating agent, 2/11 showed remission after only withdrawal of mercury agent while in 2/11 some patients achieved remission only with the addition of steroids, alkylating agents or both.


Conclusion: There is limited high-grade evidence on the effects of topical skin lightening agents on the human kidneys. Majority of available studies are case reports but have demonstrated that MCD and MN are the commonest GN associated with topical mercury exposure, and withdrawal of the mercury agent and chelation results in remission in most patients.


 


 


 


 


 


 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.