Clinical and trichoscopic evaluation of beard in men with frontal fibrosing alopecia: A multicenter prospective study
Description
Supplementary files for JAAD manuscript Frontal fibrosing alopecia (FFA) is the most common type of scarring alopecia in the world. Men represent only 3% of cases. But notably, beard involvement is reported to occurs in 50-74% of these male FFA patients. In this article, we prospectively describe in a multicenter study the clinical characteristics and trichoscopic findings in the beard of patients with FFA. Our study showed that all male patients studied presented clinical and trichoscopic involvement of the beard, highlighting the importance of this feature as a clue to the early diagnosis of FFA in male patients. Regarding trichoscopy, the most frequent finding was the absence of follicular openings, a hallmark of scarring alopecias. Interestingly, trichoscopic findings described in non-scarring alopecia were also observed. Early diagnosis of FFA in men can be a challenge, since many physicians may mistakenly attribute a receding hairline to androgenetic alopecia, which is very common in men. We believe that by describing clinical and trichoscopic features of beard involvement, which we found in 100% of our FFA patients, our paper will add important information to the literature and help physicians to establish FFA diagnosis at earlier stages in the male population.