Well - Tara Parker-Pope on Health
December 27, 2010, 6:45 pm
A Hair Loss Researcher With Purpose
By KAREN BARROW
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Dr. Angela Christiano has alopecia areata, a condition she now studies that can cause rapid hair loss.

Angela Christiano, an associate professor of dermatology and genetics at Columbia University Medical Center, studies the genetics of alopecia areata, a condition that causes sudden hair loss. Her work has led to the discovery of several genes implicated in the disease. What makes Dr. Christiano’s work unique, however, is that she has personally suffered from the hair loss of alopecia.

When Dr. Christiano was 30, a hairdresser discovered a large bald spot on the back of her head. At first she didn’t think much of it, but when more spots appeared, she sought help from a dermatologist, who told her she had alopecia, and that there wasn’t much should could do to treat it. As Dr. Christiano tells Claudia Dreifus in this week’s Conversations column:

I began reading all the papers on alopecia. In my training, nobody had talked much about hair. I thought maybe the reason was because it had all been figured out. When I started digging, I saw the opposite was true. I thought, “Maybe this is the hand of fate directing me to a topic? This is a wide-open field.” If I could identify the genes involved in alopecia, then maybe we could figure out what they did, and that might be the way to a treatment.

Having the chance to work it through in the lab was one of the things that kept me sane in this period of my life.

Dr. Christiano’s work may have a great impact on future alopecia research and treatments. To learn more, read “A Conversation With Angela Christiano.”

Also see our Consults blog, “Expert Answers on Alopecia,” where Dr. Wilma Bergfeld, a dermatologist at the Cleveland Clinic, has responded to readers’ questions about hair loss and alopecia. And please join the discussion below.

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