Prognosis of Alopecia Areata
The beginnings of alopecia areata can be characterized through small soft bald patches on the body. Usually found on the scalp. Alopecia areata is not life threatening or contagious. But the condition is unpredictable and varies to different degrees with different people. Therefore identifying a proper prognosis for a patient is extremely difficult. At the moment there are no proven medical tests that can predict the course or severity of alopecia areata.
Understanding hair
In order to understand the prognosis of alopecia areata to a greater degree, it is first important to understand the growth cycle of human hair. There are distinctively three stages to the growth of hair. Depending on the part of the body that is growing hair, the timelines can be different. Below are the stages outlined for the growth of scalp hair.
- Anagen: This stage is the initial growth stage of the hair fiber. A normal healthy scalp will have 80% of its hairs in this stage. This stage can last from 2 - 7 years for the typical hair follicle.
- Catagen: This is the stage of the hair growth cycle where follicles begin to stop growing. This stage can last from 10 - 20 days.
- Telogen: This stage is the last step of the cycle. The hair fibre has stopped growing and is set to fall out. Scalp hair will be in this stage for about 14 weeks. After this stage the hair follicle falls out and the cycle repeats itself starting from the anagen phase again. For persons who are affected by alopecia areata, the region that is affected will not resume the cycle
Ambiguity surrounding autoimmune disorders
To return to alopecia areata for a moment, we can begin to understand the nature of these autoimmune disorders by looking at how this disease acts to destroy hair growth. For some as yet unknown reason, the body’s immune system targets the hair follicles which produce hair growth. This results in weakening and the ultimate failure of hair production from targeted follicles – though not their total destruction. Depending upon the severity of the autoimmune reaction, patches, entire areas, or in rare cases all the body’s hair follicles may be targeted by the rogue immune agents.
This autoimmune targeting of specific organs or cells is something which has flummoxed researchers. Numerous theories have been presented which aim to explain how the autoimmune system chooses its targets, and why those targets vary so significantly, but no single answer has been widely accepted. In the case of alopecia areata, the reason for the immune system attacking hair follicles is also unknown.
Alopecia areata, along with some other autoimmune disorders, will generally correct itself in time. Which prompts another question which has not yet been answered by the researchers: Why do some autoimmune disorders correct themselves while others, like arthritis and type 1 diabetes remain throughout life? This, and yet more pressing autoimmune disease questions are being earnestly researched in universities and pharmaceutical labs around the globe, but progress is currently slow. Progress in the research of alopecia areata is generally particularly slow, because of the non-life threatening nature of the disease.