With a rise in many unique medical conditions where sometimes nail like structures continue to grow from the fingers, auto immune diseases are also on the rise. With stress and certain unknown reason autoimmune diseases like Alopecia Areata is one of them. It is the condition when one begins to lose hair rapidly. In certain cases, one tends to lose hair overnight. This causes stress and emotional imbalance too, for the patient.
According to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, this auto immune disease does not have an effective solution and hit and trial methods are being opted. These trials do not have a 100% result and in some cases, are completely ineffective.
So far, the doctors and researchers and scientists claim that genes are responsible for this and other autoimmune problems. They say such problems are due to heredity.
Alopecia Areata is said to have affected numerous people all over the world with an alarming number 4.5 million (roughly) being affected in the United States alone. This huge number makes it one of the most frequent cause of inflammation-induced hair loss that can affect children and adults of all hair colours defying age too. Studies say that about 66% of those affected are younger than thirty years old. Through there is no relation between the occurrence of the disease and sex of the patient, the disease was found to be more frequent in boys. A clinic hair transplant is also not advised in such case as hair transplant is not advised on a young scalp.
An erstwhile research proves that the disease is a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease. The gradual loss of protection usually provided by immune privilege of the normal hair follicle plays an important role in causing this.
People suffering from alopecia areata suffer hair loss in well-circumscribed patches of normal-appearing skin, mostly on the scalp. In severe cases the hair loss is not restricted to head only and the patient losses hair from all over the body.
Alopecia areata is found in different variants. For example, in ophiasis, the hair loss affects the occipital scalp; in sudden graying, the hair follicles suddenly become gray; and in diffuse forms, the hair loss appears mild. With so far, no other option to cure this is possible; a clinic hair transplant seems to be the best option with men and women over a certain age.
As discussed, there is no specific curative therapy for alopecia areata, the best tested immunosuppressive treatment is intradermal infections of triamcinolone acetonide. This is given every two to six weeks and stimulates localized re-growth in more than fifty percent of cases.
Other way in which this can be prevented is by reducing the already established inflammatory infiltrates with other parts so as to prevent recurrence and spread to previously unaffected hair follicles. However, this is a big challenge. To solve this challenge, better understanding is needed of how the perifollicular infiltrate in alopecia areata develops and why is it seen around follicles.
If the treatment focuses on restoring or preventing the collapse of hair follicle immune privilege, then more effective management of the disease will prevail. New therapeutic strategies are being studied in preclinical research. In Clinic hair transplant there is no such challenge and the surgery is done with FUE or FUT method.
Japan too seems to suffer from this problem and is researching fervently to cure alopecia areata. A recent research published by the Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Japan, has established that swine flu patients may suffer from spot balding, also known as alopecia areata. This has been confirmed by the people who suffered from swine flu in 2009 and 2010. The research confirms earlier findings that certain types of viral infections can also trigger alopecia areata.
