Early Onset and Late Onset Post COVID shedding: What's happening here?

Most Patients with Hair Shedding After COVID 19 Infection shed Between 6 and 10 weeks. What about the others?

A number of studies have suggested that about 20 % of patients infected with COVID 19 experience increased hair shedding or so called “telogen effluvium.” In 60-70 % of patients who do actually get shedding, the timing is fairly similar: 6-10 weeks after Sars-COV-2 infection shedding starts up.

There are two groups of patients that remain a bit of a mystery because they don’t follow this pattern. The first is those with early onset post COVID telogen effluvium (EO-PCTE). These patients experience shedding within 3-4 weeks of infection and sometimes even within 2 weeks. The second group is late onset post COVID telogen effluvium (LO-PCTE). These patients start shedding around week 12-15 - much later than average.

What are the reasons for these differences?

For now, it’s a bit of a mystery why some patients shed so soon and some so late.. It seems clear that simple things like how sick the patent is or how high the fever was don’t seem to impact how the patient sheds. Clearly, other factors are responsible - we just haven’t figured them out quite yet!