Allergies and alopecia areata, what’s the correlation?
Question by Gwendolyn L: Allergies and alopecia areata, what’s the correlation?
I was just diagnosed with Alopecia Areata after a scalp biopsy and I have been trying to research online but the wealth of information is a bit overwhelming. I’ve read that people with Alopecia Areata are likely to have asthma and/or allergies. I have both. I’m allergic to various trees, grasses, pollen, dust, mold, cat and dog dander, smoke, and I have food allergies, though not severe food allergies, to wheat, corn, peanuts, and almonds. I recall quite a few years ago getting blood work and my doctor at the time (who I didn’t like and left for a different doctor) asked me if I had allergies (which she’d know if she cared to glance at my chart), to which I responded yes, and she replied that she could tell by my bloodwork. The bloodwork I got wasn’t for allergies (I had allergy testing by an allergist in high school to hellp figure out a good way to treat my asthma), so how could she tell based on bloodwork that wasn’t even intended to diagnose allergies? I heard something about histamine levels being high in people with allergies, could that have been it? The reason I’m asking about allergies is that based on what I’ve read, it seems like Alopecia Areata is an immune disorder where your body attacks your hair/follicles, whatever, and causes the hair to fall out. And I know allergies are when your body attacks foreign objects (ie: dust, pollen, dander, etc…) I’m just confused how these conditions are related. Anyone have a better grasp of it than me who’d be willing to give a quick explanation? I don’t know if it’s too complicated to explain but if you could just give me a cursory explanation I’d truly appreciate it. Thanks so much.
Best answer:
Answer by intelex
Man, I should get the points for 4 questions for responding to this.
The correlation between allergies and AA is that both are related to over-activity of the immune system. The relationship is casual and tied to genetics by pre-determining the risk of developing overly aggressive immune responses.
Blood work that includes a cell differential will tell you much of what you need to know. Elevated levels of eosinophiles (eosinophilia) is a dead give away. Eosinophiles are like the nuclear weapon of the immune system and respond to things too large for your immune system to “eat,” such as parasites. They are triggered through IgE signaling, which is the same signaling involved with allergies. Elevated levels indicate either recent and significant infections or allergies (which your body confuses with a low-level infection).
AA is an AUTOimmune disorder. That means that your over-active, misdirected immune system is killing your hair follicles. If it attacked a different part of your body, it might be called Type 1 diabetes, MS, Grave’s Disease, rheumatoid arthritis… or any one of numerous autoimmune diseases.
The way these things usually happen is that a marginally self-reacting B cell got through the thymus without being killed. You had some kind of infection or irritation to something on your skin… a yeast infection or allergy to froofy shampoo/conditioner/soap. Due to high eosinophilic activity in your skin and their proteolytic enzyme release by the eosinophiles, that marginally self-reacting B cell found a fragment of a protein from one of your ‘digested’ hair follicles before a macrophage could mop it up. The B cell then started dividing (reproducing) and specializing against the follicle protein due to continued stimulation, likely driven by elevated interleukin signaling common to those with allergies/asthma. Antibody class switching occurred to generate an IgE response to this follicle protein. Bam… AA.
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