This condition caused the actress and presenter to shave her head. Here’s what we know about that condition.
Last night at the Oscars, the actor Will Smith abofeteó al comediante Chris Rock for pulling a prank at the expense of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who is losing her hair.
“Jade, I love you. I can not wait to see G.I. Jane 2”, said Rock, referring to G.I. Jane, the 1997 film in which Demi Moore appeared with a shaved head.
Pinkett Smith recently shaved her head because, as she explained in a Instagram video December 2021, has been “battling alopecia.” Next we explain what it entails to suffer from alopecia.
What is alopecia?
Alopecia is a broad term that refers to any form of hair loss, said Angela Lamb, a board-certified dermatologist at Mount Sinai in New York City. It can have many causes. Some people — especially men — lose scalp hair throughout their lives due to changes in hormones known as androgens, she said, and that’s considered a form of alopecia. Another type of hair loss common in the black community is traction alopeciawhich occurs when the hair has been stretched for too long.
Other people lose their hair because their body starts attacking the hair follicles in what is known as autoimmune alopecia. Autoimmune forms of alopecia include discoid lupus erythematosus, which can cause sores and scarring on the face and scalp, and central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia, or CCA, which causes scarring of the scalp and permanent hair loss. ACCC occurs almost exclusively in Afro-descendant women between the ages of 30 and 55, and research suggests which can affect up to 15 percent of these women.
Another common form of autoimmune alopecia is alopecia areata. When people talk about alopecia, they usually mean alopecia areata, which it affects to one in every 500 to 1,000 people in the United States. It’s not clear what type of alopecia Pinkett Smith has, but the way it looks suggests alopecia areata, said George Cotsarelis, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
When, why and how does alopecia areata occur?
Alopecia areata can strike in childhood, adolescence or adulthood, according to Lamb. People with the disease tend to lose their hair in clumps, she said, leading to round bald patches. (The word “areata” refers to the patchy nature of hair loss.) Some people with alopecia areata only lose hair on their scalp, while others also lose hair on other parts of the body, she said.
More than 50 percent of the time, hair that has fallen out grows back within a year, Cotsarelis said. But often, people also develop other bald spots months or years later.
It’s not clear what causes alopecia areata, but Lamb noted that it may have a genetic component. If one parent has alopecia areata, for example, her child has a one to 10 percent chance of developing it as well, she said. Alopecia areata can also be triggered by stressful events and nutritional deficiencies, such as a lack of iron, Cotsarelis said.
Doctors diagnose alopecia areata by taking a biopsy of the scalp and sending it to pathologists, who study the skin cells under a microscope to determine the cause of hair loss.
People who develop alopecia areata are more likely than others to develop other conditions, such as thyroid disease, diabetes, allergies and asthma, according to Cotsarelis.
How is alopecia areata treated?
Various medications can be used to treat alopecia areata, but some treatments don’t work well in some people, Lamb said, so patients may have to try three or four approaches before settling on something that works.
The good news is that in the case of alopecia areata, “hair can always grow back if the inflammation is removed,” says Cotsarelis.
A common treatment is the injection of anti-inflammatory drugs, such as steroids, directly into the affected parts of the scalp to prevent the body from attacking the hair follicles, Lamb explained. These injections can be given monthly and can cause side effects such as skin discoloration or small indentations in the skin. Some people also use topical corticosteroid treatments on the scalp, such as betamethasone valerate.
Another drug that doctors have recently started using is a monoclonal antibody called dupilumab, a drug that has long been used to treat asthma and eczema, according to Lamb. Dupilumab can be injected into the thigh or arm once every two weeks and rarely causes serious side effects, he said.
Some doctors have started treating the disease with oral medications such as tofacitinib and baricitinib, which are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat rheumatoid arthritis but have also been shown in studies that help with hair loss, Cotsarelis said. However, these oral drugs can have serious side effects, she noted, increasing the risk of blood clots and lymphoma, and more research is needed on their long-term effects.
Sometimes alopecia areata resolves on its own, but there’s usually no cure, Lamb said. Partly because of that, a diagnosis of alopecia can be distressing, she said, but with the right treatments, many people get better. “We can get to a point where you don’t even notice the condition,” she said.