Assessing the Efficacy of Needling With or Without Corticosteroids in the Repigmentation of Vitiligo
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02191748. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Vitiligo is an autoimmune cutaneous disorder that destroys melanocytes leading to depigmented areas of skin. In the United States, vitiligo affects 1% of patients, causing not only changes in the color of skin, but also significant cosmetic concerns and quality of life issues. Current treatment modalities, which include topical corticosteroids, intralesional corticosteroids, phototherapy, and systemic immunosuppression, are variably effective in inducing repigmentation. Unfortunately, some cases of vitiligo are refractory to treatment. There is a need for new, effective modalities to treat patients with otherwise refractory vitiligo. Needling is an office based procedure that theoretically transposes healthy, pigmented skin cells to depigmented areas using a needle in vitiligo patients. Two preliminary studies of needling as a novel treatment for vitiligo had promising results but were limited by small sample size and subjective results. The proposed randomized control trial (RCT) will further investigate the use of needling to treat vitiligo. It differs from the previous studies in that it seeks to identify the cause of clinical benefit by comparing needling alone to needling with corticosteroid, examines a larger number of patients, and quantifies improvement using confocal microscopy. Confocal microscopy (CFM) allows non-invasive visualization of the skin on a cellular level and has been used in the past to diagnose cutaneous pigmentary conditions. This study would be the first RCT of needling in vitiligo to use an objective measure to quantify results, thus has the potential to establish needling as a novel, effective treatment for vitiligo and to evaluate the utility of CFM for monitoring response to treatment.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT02191748
- Recruitment status
- Terminated
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase 2, Phase 3
- Enrollment
- 22 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 89 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Aug 31, 2014
- Primary completion
- Dec 31, 2017
- Completion
- Dec 31, 2017
- Last update posted
- Jul 24, 2017
2014 – 2018
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RWJUH Dermatology office | Somerset | New Jersey | 08873 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02191748, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Jul 24, 2017 · Synced Sep 5, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02191748 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.