Iron Plays a Certain Role in Patterned Hair Loss

Abstract

Role of iron in hair loss is not clear yet. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between iron and hair loss. Retrospective chart review was conducted on patients with female pattern hair loss (FPHL) and male pattern hair loss (MPHL). All patients underwent screening including serum ferritin, iron, and total iron binding capacity (TIBC), CBC, ESR and thyroid function test. For normal healthy controls, age-sex matched subjects who had visited the hospital for a check-up with no serious disease were selected. A total 210 patients with FPHL (n = 113) and MPHL (n = 97) with 210 healthy controls were analyzed. Serum ferritin concentration (FC) was lower in patients with FPHL (49.27 ± 55.8 µg/L), compared with normal healthy women (77.89 ± 48.32 µg/L) (P < 0.001). Premenopausal FPHL patients turned out to show much lower serum ferritin than age/sex-matched controls (P < 0.001). Among MPHL patients, 22.7% of them showed serum FC lower than 70 µg/L, while no one had serum FC lower 70 µg/L in healthy age matched males. These results suggest that iron may play a certain role especially in premenopausal FPHL. The initial screening of iron status could be of help for hair loss patients.

Androgenetic Alopecia: A Chronic or Pubertal Onset Disease Retarded by Blood Donation

“…iron deficiency leads to certain kinds of hair loss e.g. female pattern hair loss, telogen effluvium, alopecia areata, alopecia universal [12][13][14][15][16][17], however some researchers denied such claims [18][19][20][21][22]. Clinically iron deficiency is defined either as an increase in total iron binding capacity tion of ferritin under 40 ng/mL [23][24][25].…”

Controversy on the role of iron and a clinical trial with intermittent iron and nutritional supplements in hair loss management

“…regarded the hair follicles as storage sites for ferritin, which can be utilized in case of deficiency by arresting or compromising the hair growth while maintaining more important functions of the blood, red blood cells and bone marrow cells (30). Which means that the iron deficiency in circulation will get corrected to normal levels, but there will be concomitant hair loss with contradictory lab tests depicting normal iron levels.…”

“…(38) It is important to understand nutrient interactions to decipher the controversial findings. Iron deficiency would be masked as hair growth is arrested, follicles are shifted to telogen and ferritin stores in the follicle or the ferritin intended to be used for hair growth is redirected and utilized to compensate the low ferritin levels in circulation (30). Thus clinically, serum ferritin levels continue to appear as normal in presence of hair fall.…”

“…In addition to normal iron levels, Kelkitli, Ozturk and Aslan, emphasised the importance of zinc for erythropoiesis (39). According to the research of two separate teams, Semba, Bloem et.al, (40) (30). There is close interrelation between nutrients.…”

Alopezien infolge von Medikamenten oder von anderen Haut- und systemischen Erkrankungen

“…Auch andere mögliche Ursachen sind mit TE in Verbindung gebracht worden, darunter die Einwirkung von UV-Strahlen auf das Haar; saisonale Schwankungen (Inzidenzspitze zwischen Juli und Oktober); Blitzdiäten; Eisenmangel und Auslöser wie Kontakt-Sensibilisierungsmittel - z.B. in Haarfärbemitteln -, die Lipide, Keratin und Melanin schädigen und so die Apoptose und letztlich den Haarausfall fördern [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. Für die Diagnose ist eine detaillierte Befragung erforderlich.…”