TUESDAY, Oct. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with rapidly progressive alopecia areata (RPAA) tend to show favorable prognosis regardless of treatment selected, according to research published online Sept. 24 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Over a three-year period, Masaki Uchiyama, M.D., from the Tokyo Medical University, and colleagues retrospectively analyzed 1,030 patients diagnosed with AA.
The researchers found that patients with regenerated vellus hairs showed a significantly higher improvement or cure rate regardless of AA severity. Lower rates of cure and higher rates of relapse were significantly associated with early onset and lengthy duration. Regardless of treatment utilized, RPAA patients tended to show a good prognosis.
"Our study suggested that there was no statistically significant influence of the initial treatment modalities on the prognosis of AA patients with severe hair loss, including both RPAA and chronic persistent AA," Uchiyama and colleagues conclude. "Recent studies have demonstrated that AA is associated with autoimmunity. However, RPAA patients tend to have a favorable prognosis, and the pathogenesis of curable RPAA is thought to be less associated with the autoimmune system than chronic forms of AA."
Abstract
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