Hair Therapy & Transplantation
Open Access

Alopecia Areata Open Access Articles

Several lines of evidence support the notion that alopecia areata has a genetic basis. In general, the prevalence of adult patients with a family history is estimated to be between 0% and 8.6%, whereas in children data between 10% and 51.6% are reported One study found that men were more likely to have a positive family history than women The occurrence of the disease in identical twins siblings and families with several generations of affected individuals ndicates that this alopecia areata has a heritable basis. Most of the early human genetic studies were candidate gene association studies, in which linkage to specific genes or groups of genes was the focus. These studies focused on the human leukocyte antigen class II (HLA-D) region on human chromosome 6 as the most likely region for genes that regulate susceptibility or resistance to alopecia areata Family-based linkage studies and GWAS analyses, which were greatly enabled by the repository of the National Alopecia Areata Registry, identified linkage or association on many chromosomes, which suggests that alopecia areata is a very complex polygenic disease. These results confirmed earlier QTL analysis studies using an alopecia areata mouse model, often with similar, if not identical results.