"New Treatment Shows Promise for Hair-loss Condition"
Allison Mari has been struggling with devastating hair loss her entire life. She was diagnosed with alopecia as a child. The condition causes the immune system to attack hair follicles. Her alopecia didn't respond to medications, so she enrolled in a new clinical trial at The Mount Sinai Hospital, where Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, professor of dermatology, medicine, and clinical immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has been studying similarities between alopecia and eczema, a chronic inflammatory skin condition with severe itching and redness. "Then I started to think some of the treatments for eczema and some of the pathways that are involved in eczema may also be involved in alopecia," explained Dr. Guttman-Yassky. "I think a lot of us have given up, so I want people to realize there is hope out there and I think they are close to finding something that works," Mari said. The final results of the trial will be analyzed next year.
— Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, Professor, Dermatology, Clinical Immunology, Medicine, Vice Chair, Research, Department of Dermatology, Director, The Center for Excellence in Eczema, Director, Laboratory of Inflammatory Skin Diseases, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai