hair loss pattern

[forhair1987]

hi ,
i have a question for the hair transplant experts ,why do some people lose hair even in the donor area?? i mean i see few people left with a thin strip of hair at the sides and back of their head why doea this happen?? are these people considered as special cases

[Paul Straub, MD]

The primary reason men lose hair is hereditary. It can come from the father's side or the mother's side. What we inherit is a sensitivity to the male hormones. The hormone which is the most toxic to the hair is dihydro-testosterone. The action is similar to an allergy but not a true allergic reaction. A true allergic reaction is an antibody-antigen reaction. This is more like a toxic reaction.

Some men receive genes for minor hair loss and others receive genes for major hair loss. Male pattern hair loss, which accounts for the vast majority of hair loss in men, but not all of it, continues throughout a lifetime. Thus, as men get older, the balding or thinning area gets larger. The hair on the sides and back, the so-called donor hair, always gets smaller and occasionally gets thinner especially with very advanced age.

There are a few other special cases such as scarring alopecia or alopecia areata which do not follow this pattern. These these cases are rare.
Paul M. Straub, MD, FACS

[Dr. Glenn Charles]

It is important to realize that people have very different densities to begin with.
This is also true for the donor area. If you have a patient who never had very good density and they develop severe male pattern baldness, others might assume that they thinned out in the donor area also. When in fact they still had their original density in the donor area. Hair characteristics also change as a person ages. The hair can become finer and straighter which might give the appearance of decreasing density. When potential patients ask me if the donor hair is permanent I tell them that whatever genetic programming the donor has
it will behave the same even if I move it to another location. In other words if your donor hair is genetically programmed to decrease in density by 10% with advancing age, that same 10% loss will occur over time in the newly transplanted area.