Albinism in humans Albinism in humans Albinism is a congenital disorder characterized in humans by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Albinism is associated with a number of vision defects, such as photophobia, nystagmus, and amblyopia. Lack of skin pigmentation makes for more susceptibility to sunburn and skin cancers. In rare cases such as Chédiak–Higashi syndrome, albinism may be associated with deficiencies in the transportation of melanin granules. This also affects essential granules present in immune cells leading to increased susceptibility to infection. Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles and is known to affect
Hypoadrenocorticism in dogs body attacks and kill its own tissue ("immune mediated destruction"). Other cases are caused by various disease processes, including failure of the pituitary gland to secrete ACTH, the hormone which stimulates the adrenal production of cortisol. Hypoadrenocorticism is more frequent in dogs than in humans; in fact, it may occur one hundred times more often in the canine population. It mostly affects young to middle-aged female dogs, as the average age at diagnosis being four years old (although it has been found in puppies and dogs up to twelve years old). About seventy percent of dogs that are diagnosed with