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mean age of the females was 28.44 + 5.26 and that of males was 30 + 1.414 years. Most of the females belonged to age group of 20-30 years while there were only two males one belonging to 20-39 years of age group while the other one was in age group of 30-40 years.
Melasma is more common in women. We found the same in our study where females comprised 90% of the study population. This was supported by a study done in India by Sarkar et al. [ 22, 23] Another study by Sarvjot et al. also showed the female predominance with M: F ratio of 1:3 [20]. We found about 10% involvement of men in our study similar to studies by Katsambas et al. and Vazquez et al. [24, 25 ] Female preponderance noted in our study can be explained by the high incidence of melasma in women and also pregnancy, oral contraceptive pills, and estrogen-progesterone therapies implicated as various factors in the etiopathogenesis of this condition. Moreover, females are more conscious of the cosmetic disfigurement caused by melasma which may be one of the important reasons for more females presenting to the outpatient department for treatment.
A positive family history was observed in 25% (n 5) of patients, in the present study, which was in accordance with various reported studies