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  • Audiological abnormalities in alopecia areata
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Hearing threshold abnormalities in patients with alopecia areata

Abstract

Alopecia areata (AA) is a common disease of the hair follicle characterized by the appearance of patchy areas of hair loss leaving a smooth and nonscarred scalp. AA is a T-cell-mediated autoimmune disease with cytokines playing an important role. Follicular melanocytes is an important target in the autoimmune process of AA, and AA may have an effect on hearing function by affecting the melanocytes in the inner ear. Our study aimed at investigating autoimmune hearing loss in Egyptian patients with AA in comparison with controls. The study included 40 participants — 20 AA patients and 20 controls. All patients were subjected to a detailed history taking and examination to detect type, extent of AA in addition to complete clinical, otoscopic and audiological examination, including high frequencies for both ears of patients and age-matched controls. The study revealed a significant presence of sensorineural hearing loss in AA patients in comparison with controls. This hearing loss had a direct correlation with the disease severity, duration and the recurrence of attacks.

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Correspondence to Tayseer Taha Abdel Rahman MD.

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This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

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Shaheen, M.A., Matta, M., Abdel Rahman, T.T. et al. Hearing threshold abnormalities in patients with alopecia areata. Egypt J Otolaryngol 31, 267–272 (2015). https://doi.org/10.4103/1012-5574.168374

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.4103/1012-5574.168374

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