الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Many skin diseases affect patients in a multidimensional manner, ranging from emotional to social interactions, symptoms, and functional impairment that lead to the development of many skin-specific QoL measures. The Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) developed in the United Kingdom in 1994 is considered among the first measures to be developed specifically for skin diseases. To the best of our knowledge, few epidemiological studies have been carried out to determine the prevalence of skin diseases in the Egyptian population as well as their impact on patients’ QoL. So, we aimed at conducting this study to describe the QoL in patients with Psoriasis, Vitiligo, and Leprosy and to compare the degree of affection of QoL among these diseases versus a control group. In our study, there was a small percent of divorced / widow patients in leprosy and psoriasis but not in vitiligo. Another different point of view is that lack of association with poverty parameters including low education, low social class, high crowding index, and poor water supply as found in Hegazy et al. study. In our study, however, there was statistically significant difference in crowding index between the three diseases with slightly more crowding in psoriasis cases unlike the other two diseases. Our study revealed that non-manual types of works were statistically significantly higher in vitiligo group while manual types of works were statistically significantly higher in both leprosy and psoriasis groups. In our study, DLQI score was highest in patients with psoriasis followed by vitiligo then leprosy and it was lowest as expected in healthy control. There was statistically significant difference in DLQI score between each two of the studied groups. Subsequent analysis revealed that DLQI score was statistically significantly higher in psoriasis > vitiligo > leprosy > control group. This study revealed that, in psoriasis, there was statistically significant ’negative’ correlation between DLQI score and age ,and statistically significant ’positive’ correlation between DLQI score and PASI. On the other hand, in vitiligo, there was statistically significant ’negative’ correlation between DLQI score and age but NO significant correlation exists between DLQI score and VASI. Our study revealed that, in leprosy, hand as well as feet but not eye affection were independent predictors of DLQI score while in vitiligo, head & neck affection was the only independent predictor of DLQI score. Involvement of head and neck regions which are exposed sites as a predictor of DLQI score in Vitiligo cases is in accordance with observation by Amer et al (2016).