Do you have cancer? (Alopecia Areata)

A lot of kids with alopecia areata get asked that question. Why else would a child be losing his or her hair?
Alopecia areata is an autoimmune skin disease where your lymphocytes attack your own hair follicles. This results in patchy loss of hair all over the body, including head hair, eyebrows, arms, and legs. It is usually a disease of childhood and presents as round patches of smooth hair loss. For most people, the hair grows back and another patch may appear somewhere else. Eventually, most kids grow out of it. But for some, it progresses to alopecia totalis (complete loss of head hair) or alopecia universalis (complete loss of body hair).

Treatments include topical or intralesional steroids, but these are not cures and do not have great efficacy rates.

Because AA is not known well among the public, this can be a difficult disease for kids and adults alike. There were a number of campers with AA last week, and they had lots of stories about being stared at in public, kids making fun of them, and people asking them if they had cancer. They discussed different hair accessories (like hats and bandanas) to cover up their heads. For this group of campers in particular, I think it is therapeutic to be around other kids like themselves and to talk about they're good days and bad days with AA.

The National AA Foundation has a great website, check it out.