Clinicians are noticing an increase in patients who are losing their hair as a result of the disturbing side effect of COVID-19.
At Mount Sinai Health System in New York, the director of skin and hair rejuvenation, Dr. Brian Abittan, said that he sees many patients each week who have complained of hair loss following COVID-19.
There are more patients reporting the symptom after COVID, but there isn’t enough data to say how many people actually encounter this phenomena or what risk factors exist. The good news, according to specialists, is that COVID-related hair loss looks to be transient. Clinicians should reassure patients that their hair will probably grow back despite the fact that there are still many unsolved concerns concerning this condition.
There is more evidence to suggest that COVID infection increases the chance of hair loss. Hair loss was one of a wide range of symptoms that post-COVID patients reported to their primary care doctors, according to a study that was published in Nature Medicine last month.
The researchers discovered that patients with a history of COVID were almost four times more likely to experience hair loss than those who weren’t affected.
In addition, a research published in the Lancet journal estimated that 22% of COVID hospital patients lost hair during their hospitalization.
Telogen effluvium is the most typical type of hair loss experienced by post-COVID patients.
When the hair growth cycle is disturbed by traumas like surgery, sickness, or any stressful life event like relocating or pregnancy, telogen effluvium develops. Anagen, catagen, and telogen are the three stages that hair goes through during a growth cycle.
The active growth phase is known as anagen, the transitional phase is known as catagen, and the resting phase is known as telogen, which is when hair sheds.
When a greater percentage of scalp hairs enter this resting phase, shedding increases and is known as telogen effluvium. According to Abittan, it’s typical for sufferers to lose 100 hairs every day.
However, he continued, telogen effluvium patients may have daily hair loss of up to 300, 500, or even 1,000 hairs.
According to Dr. Alexis Young, a dermatologist at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, hair may begin to fall out as soon as two or three months after infection. She said that the shedding can continue for up to six months and that the time it takes for hair to regrow is normally one and a half years.
One theory on the possible causes of infection-related hair loss in COVID patients is the patients’ heightened level of inflammation. Interleukin levels rise during COVID, which may be contributing to the premature transition of hair into the telogen phase, according to Young.
It is possible that patients who were hospitalized with COVID or put on a mechanical ventilator have greater shedding than individuals with moderate cases because telogen effluvium is brought on by stress on the body, she added.
Other explanations for COVID-related hair loss involve the virus entering the hair follicles directly, thereby interfering with the growth cycle. Some have proposed the idea that microscopic microclots may also interfere with the growth cycle since COVID creates blood clots.
