Alopecia Areata and Eye Diseases: More Data Links the Two

New Study Builds on Prior Data Linking Alopecia Areata to Eye Diseases

Patients with alopecia areata may have increased risk of retinal diseases. In the very first episode of the Evidence Based Hair podcast, I reviewed a very important study from Taiwan suggesting that patients with alopecia areata may have an increased risk of various diseases of the retina. The study compared 9,909 patients with alopecia areata compared to 99,090 controls. In this study, patients with aloepcia areata had a 3.98 fold increased risk of retinal detachment, a 3.24 fold increased risk of retinopathy and a 2.45 fold increased risk of retinal vascular occlusion compared to patients without alopecia areata.

Thatiparthi A et al. 2022

Authors of a new study set out to evaluate the prevalence of various eye conditions in patients with AA. To do so, the authors analyzed electronic health records at a single academic center, UCI, over a 10-year (March 2011-March 2021). In this study, there were 435 patients with AA and 35,349 healthy controls. The AA group was younger than the control group (41y s 50y p<0.0001). There was no statistically significant  difference in gender representation (37.7% AA male vs 42.3% control male; p=0.054).

Comment

This is an interesting study. The authors point out that genome-wide association studies show that immune dysregulation in various inflammatory ocular conditions and alopecia areata may have a variety of overlapping genetic factors, pathogenic inflammatory changes, and environmental factors. More study is clearly needed but an important message here is that concerns raised by patients about eye symptoms need to be taken seriously and referral to eye specialists should be considered for patients with persistent and troublesome symptoms.

REFERENCE

Thatiparthi A et al. Inflammatory ocular comorbidities in alopecia areata: a retrospective cohort study of a single academic center. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2022 Jun 16;S0190-9622(22)01009-X.

Ting HC et al. Association between alopecia areata and retinal diseases: A nationwide population-based cohort study. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2021 Nov 1;S0190-9622(21)02735-3.