Previous investigations on vitiligo patients have demonstrated that transcript levels of Nrf2 and the downstream detoxification genes such as GCLC, p62, GCLM, NQO-1, HO-1, and GSTM-1 were upregulated to protect melanocytes against H2O2-induced toxicity in vitiligo lesions compared with the matched non-lesional skin26,27. Here, SQSTM1 is linked to vitiligo.