Suffering from the same illness as former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a dog is intriguing social networks. And for good reason: in 2 years he became unrecognizable.
On the Reddit platform, an owner recently shared several images of his dog, with a somewhat unusual coat. Which did not fail to arouse the curiosity of Internet users. He explained that the animal, although very young at only 4 years old, was suffering from a chronic illness which had been diagnosed two years previously and that there was nothing he could do about it.
First alerted by the appearance of small spots on his dog’s coat, Matt Smith, an American from Oklahoma, was in fact informed that his dog Buster was carrying an already well-known disease, but which affects usually men and which, in this case, can be explained by significant exposure to stress. And this disease was even popularized in France by a political representative well known to the French, the former Prime Minister and current mayor of Le Havre, Edouard Philippe.
At the end of his mandate, Edouard Philippe appeared sporting a half-white, half-black beard, which at the time caused more than one reaction. He ended up explaining on the microphone of RTL that this new physical peculiarity was vitiligo, due to “stress and work”. The king of pop Michael Jackson also suffered from this disease which affects 0.5 to 1% of the world’s population and discolors the hair. For Edouard Philippe, this was accompanied by alopecia, this time a loss of hair on the body. Very often the hair, which causes common baldness in men, but also other hairs and even the eyebrows, which can be very intriguing.
What is vitiligo? It is a chronic autoimmune disease, linked to the progressive disappearance of the pigment cells responsible for the coloring of the skin. It causes the appearance of white spots on areas of the skin and sometimes hair. Vitiligo is certainly linked to a dysfunction of the immune system, but it does not cause any physical suffering and is not contagious.
In dogs, vitiligo generally begins by appearing on the face and particularly the muzzle, before progressing to the pads and gradually affecting the entire body of the animal. If it is neither painful nor contagious, the disease must still be the subject of particular attention from the owner in the case of a pet, as well as from the patient when it manifests itself in humans.
Vitiligo can appear “at any time of life, any age, and regardless of skin color,” says Inserm. If the disease is painless, its physical consequences are mainly aesthetic. In Buster’s case, the beautiful jet black coat turned completely white after two years. But before that, the dog gradually lost all its hair, which over time grew back in a completely different color.
In dogs, certain breeds are predisposed to developing this pathology: breeds such as the Rottweiler, German Shepherd, Dachshunds, Labradors, Doberman pinchers, Siberian Huskies, Golden Retrievers to name only the best known. Many other animals carry vitiligo, whether domesticated or wild, and live perfectly well with it.