Losing Hair? Check Your Teeth

Losing Hair? Check Your Teeth
Alopecia Tied To Dental Health
http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/health/14704332/detail.html?rss=hon&psp=health

POSTED: 6:46 am HST November 27, 2007
UPDATED: 8:04 am HST November 27, 2007


People who have started to lose hair -- either on their scalp or on other body parts -- may need to visit a dentist, according to researchers in Granada.

Researchers there said that the bald patches, called alopecia areata or localized alopecia, are closely tied to infections of the teeth.

"We have found that bald patches caused by tooth infection are not always in the same place. They normally appear on a line projected from the dental infection and can thus can be located on the face at the level of the maxillary teeth, above a line through the lip-angle to the scalp, beard, or even to the eyebrow. Nevertheless, they can also be located far from infection outbreak," authors Gil Montoya and Cutando Soriano said in a news release.


They said alopecia typically appears as one or more round bald patches on the scalp, in the beard or in the eyebrows. Some people lose their eyelashes. Usually, the hair regrows in a few months, though there can be relapses.

Alopecia is thought to affect 1 in 1,000 people.

The researchers said some cases of alopecia may be auto-immune problems, meaning the body attacks hair follicles as if they were invaders.
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