Can Alopecia Be Cured By Rheumatism Medicine? Researchers Suggest

Hair loss can be a normal sign of getting old, but for some people, it is a severe condition with no cure. However, recent studies might find a cure for this disease, as they link a medicine which aids arthritis with the regrowing of hair.

The disease called Alopecia Areata is an autoimmune disease that causes severe hair loss. It includes patchy or even complete loss of hair on the head, body, and face. This disease has no promising cure.

As follows, a team of researchers from Yale and Stanford University conducted a new study on how to aid Alopecia Areata, in which they discovered that a drug use for rheumatoid arthritis can give alleviation to the disease. With high hopes for finding the cure, they conducted an experiment.

A professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Brett A. King, executed the experiment by giving 66 patients with Alopecia Areata condition a medicine for arthritis "tofacitinib citrate." Each of the patients took the drugs for three months, and experts evaluated the hair growth.

In line with this, Most of the patients were completely bald before the trial had started, while some have bald patches. As a result, two-thirds of the completely bald patients showed growth of hair while one-third of the patients have recovered 50 percent in the patches of loss hair. Thus, Dr. King said in an interview "This study demonstrates the drug is effective for treating alopecia areata," as reported by New Haven Register News.com.

However, Dr. King suggested that further research needs to be conducted since they cannot tell the effect of tofacitinib citrate if taken for a long period of time as well as the impact of adolescents in some severe cases of alopecia areata. He added that "After all, severe hair loss during childhood is devastating, and can rob children of important years of development," according to Yahoo News.