Salon Allergy Specialist

Salon Allergy Specialist

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Hair Loss from PPD

I have been getting requests about hair loss from PPD. I did some research, and I was able to find very little information on this subject. There was one article on PubMed stating that hair loss can happen from a severe PPD allergy. (Severe Hair Loss of the Scalp due to a Hair Dye Containing Para phenylenediamine.
Ishida W, Makino T, Shimizu T.) For me to explain what I learned from this, and one other article I found, I will explain how hair grows in three cycles.

There are three cycles of hair growth, anagen, or growing, cantogen, or resting, and telogen, or falling out. At any given time, 30% of your hair should be in one of these phases, or moving into one of them. In the article noted above, the patient is diagnosed with severe allergic contact dermatitis, including skin lesions, and this resulted in telogen effluvium. (severe hair loss) This was determined to be from a reaction to PPD. The lesions were severe enough, or the allergy alone caused trauma to the scalp, which has forced the anagen and cantogen cycles to move to telogen. The skin lesions gradually improved after starting treatment with the systemic, or oral, corticosteroids. "The possibility that allergic contact dermatitis from hair dyes may be responsible for telogen effluvium should always be considered in a patient with increased hair loss." This was the end of the article.  I had noted that the skin improvement was mentioned, but the hair loss was not addressed. I don't know why it was not said if it had improved, stayed the same, or worsened. So, we have proof that hair loss from PPD exists.

There was one other article from Germany that I found on EuroPubMed "Idiopathic chronic telegon effluvium in the woman", but I am not sure that it has much more information from what was reported above. One of the most interesting points in the article was that they used information from  based on observation from the sheep wool industry and clinical experience. Sheep?! The treatment had and extra note "They include the use of L-cystine-containing oral preparations and of corticosteroids." Again, no notations on how the results were.

It is very disturbing to me that I have more than 6 requests right now from across the country, one from England, and I do not know what the results are. I can write what I suspect the results are, but I am not a doctor, just a hairdresser. I am just guessing. My GUESS is that the hair grows back, as the articles do not suggest that the problem is permanent. They also do not say that treatment is hopeless, or permanent, or anything dramatic. If you are the one who is losing the hair, that is dramatic enough.

One more note, if you are facing losing some hair and are looking at extensions, look at halo extensions. Anything that will apply traction or pulling on your hair can be detrimental. If you need to, you can always contact me.

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