One Sided Body Hair Loss
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Last month I had an interesting patient who had one sided hair loss. He was visiting me for treatment of his male patterned hair loss and eyebrow hair loss. He also had patchy hair loss on the back of his donor area of scalp that had been bothering him for a long time. His eyebrow hair loss was more pronounced on one side. During his examination, he was pointing out his hair eyebrow hair loss which was more prominent on one side. During the examination of the other parts of his body, I noticed hair loss on one side of his body that was quite distinguished primarily on his legs and eyebrows.
Unilateral balding, or one sided hair loss, is rarely reported in medical literature. There is a report of a rare medical syndrome in which patients experienced alopecia as part of the presentation of the syndrome. The condition is called Satoyoshi syndrome in which patients may have a slowly progressive disorder of unknown etiology with a poor long-term prognosis.
The syndrome consists of the following clinical features: (1) painful, intermittent muscle spasms; (2) alopecia or hair loss; (3) diarrhea; and (4) skeletal abnormalities. The reported age of onset is typically less than 20 years of age, but three adult onset cases have also been reported. There has been only one sided report of Satoyoshi syndrome so far. Our patient did not recall the other manifestations of his condition in the past, but did have one sided hair loss on his eyebrow and lower extremities.
