Potential Treatment For Alopecia Areata Discovered in Turkey

added 13th February 2015

Topical Immunotherapy is often recommended as a treatment for severe Alopecia Areata, however, it is known to have a low success rate. Researchers in Turkey may have uncovered a way to improve the efficacy of this type of treatment by swapping monotherapy for combination therapy.

Currently, topical immunotherapy for advanced alopecia, where 50% or more of the scalp has hair loss, involves the application of a diphenylcyclopropenone (DPCP) solution to the scalp using a swab. The success rate of this method is reported to be around 40%.

This latest research found that replacing this monotherapy with a combination therapy where the diphenylcyclopropenone was paired with anthralin, led to superior results in patients with chronic alopecia areata.

The study was carried out on 47 patients with severe alopecia areata or treatment-resistant Alopecia Areata, as a retrospective analysis of diphenylcyclopropenone’s effectiveness, side effects and relapse rates, both with and without anthralin. For at least 30 weeks, 22 patients were treated with DPCP only, whilst 25 patients underwent the combination therapy involving both DPCP and anthralin.

Results proved encouraging for combination therapy with 72% of these patients experiencing full regrowth, compared to 36.4% of the monotherapy patients. Researchers did note, however, that the combination therapy resulted in shorter duration of hair growth. Although they had a higher rate of regrowth in relation to facial hair – eyebrows, eyelashes and beard – than the DPCP monotherapy patients.

Although all the study patients experienced side effects of localized pruritus, vesicles, bullae or a combination of all three, researchers found that those who received combination therapy experienced additional side effects, such as folliculitis, hyperpigmentation, and staining of skin, hair and clothes, more frequently than the monotherapy group.

In the published findings, researchers further concluded that combination therapy did not appear to have any effect on the relapse rates of chronic extensive and/or treatment-resistant Alopecia Areata.