The research that changed vitiligo treatment

Traditional phototherapy treats large areas of skin — healthy and affected alike — causing unnecessary side effects and often inconsistent results. In 1999, Dr. Menchini published the world’s first scientific study on microphototherapy applied to vitiligo: a technique that concentrates therapeutic light exclusively on depigmented patches, sparing the surrounding healthy skin.

What this means for the patient: more targeted treatments, fewer side effects on healthy skin, and a faster therapeutic response in the treated areas.

Wood’s lamp has been a diagnostic tool in dermatology for decades, but until 2001 there was no standardized method for using it to monitor vitiligo over time. Dr. Menchini developed and codified the “flash” technique — a brief illumination with constant parameters — which makes it possible to photograph and precisely document the condition of vitiligo, allowing images to be compared over months and years.

What this means for the patient: for the first time, therapeutic progress becomes objectively measurable — no longer “it seems better,” but documented visual evidence that can be compared over time.

How can we measure whether vitiligo is stable, improving, or worsening? Before 2008, there was no standardized tool to answer this question objectively. Dr. Menchini published the Vitiligo Activity Index: a clinical index that makes it possible to quantify disease activity over time, transforming subjective observations into measurable and comparable data.

What this means for the patient: the physician can accurately assess whether the disease is active or stable, and adapt the therapy accordingly — with decisions based on data, not impressions.

The search for solutions to accelerate repigmentation led Dr. Menchini to develop an original topical formulation based on piperine — the main alkaloid found in black pepper. Applied to depigmented areas, this cream is able to stimulate and speed up the skin repigmentation process, enhancing the effect of other ongoing therapies.

What this means for the patient: an additional therapeutic tool in the treatment journey, capable of visibly accelerating the return of the skin’s natural color.

Until 2013, predicting whether a patient’s vitiligo was in an active or stable phase was essentially impossible without waiting weeks or months of observation. Dr. Menchini was the first in the world to identify and classify the visible morphological signs indicating ongoing vitiligo progression — making it possible to recognize disease activity before depigmentation spreads.

What this means for the patient: the physician can now detect early signs of worsening and intervene sooner, instead of chasing the disease after it has already spread.

Years of consultations, thousands of patients, tens of thousands of clinical data points collected — but without the right tool, all this knowledge remained fragmented across medical records. In 2022, Dr. Menchini created Terapico: a medical management software specifically designed to evaluate the clinical progress of individual patients and, above all, to measure the real effectiveness of therapies through the systematic comparison of thousands of visits and patients.

For the first time, the data collected over more than twenty years of clinical practice in vitiligo became searchable, comparable, and usable to continuously refine therapeutic decisions.

What this means for the patient: every therapeutic decision is supported not only by the physician’s experience, but also by the analysis of thousands of real clinical cases — making the treatment journey more precise, more personalized, and grounded in concrete evidence.

Twenty-six years of research, clinical observation, and innovation converge into a single integrated therapeutic protocol. In 2025, Dr. Menchini officially presented the ImmunoNova Method at the AIDA National Congress: an approach that does not simply treat the visible signs of vitiligo, but addresses its deeper immunological causes by integrating all the diagnostic and therapeutic tools developed over the previous decades.

What this means for the patient: a complete treatment journey built on 26 years of original research — not just another therapy, but the synthesis of everything science has taught us about vitiligo.