New York Times
August 27, 2010
Alopecia areata is a mysterious disorder that can cause everything from a barely noticeable loss of a patch of hair to total loss of all body hair, including the eyebrows. When alopecia was recently featured in the Patient Voices series, several readers had questions about the relations between stress and the onset of the disorder. Here, Dr. Maria Hordinsky, a dermatologist from the University of Minnesota, responds.
Stress has been cited frequently as a factor in autoimmune diseases, including alopecia areata. Yet experimental evidence to decisively link stress and alopecia has been lacking.