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Permalink Reply by boredawn on October 21, 2015 at 9:36am

Hiya,

I found steroid injections fantastically effective. I have pictures in a thread called 'success story'. Obviously things can vary from person to person but between April - Oct I have had almost full regrowth from them after having injections every 8-12 weeks during this period. I have read that the larger area the area affected the less impact the injections can have - however i had very extensive hairloss amounting to about 60% of my hair. Hope that helps and good luck with the injections

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Permalink Reply by Dee on October 29, 2015 at 3:01pm

Hi,  Our 10 year old son was diagnosed with AA last February (he was 9 at the time) where over several months he lost about 40% of his hair.  We saw every doctor possible, from an endocrinologist, gastrointestinal specialist, pediatrician, dermatologist.  We've been told it is autoimmune, it can be triggered by stress. RA which is autoimmune runs in our family and so does seasonal allergies, food allergies and asthma.  He has seasonal allergies, dust allergies, cat allergies and  asthma tendencies.   He has always been a worrier and as a young child was always easily overstimulated.  His vitamin D was very low.  We took him off gluten, as we read it can be a factor too, we try to keep his life stress free...which is hard if you are built that way,(he now is at reduced gluten intake, we give him 3000IU of vit D3 a day and  a multivitamin  and he has been going for his monthly injections..he also did rogaine for a few months until we saw the fuzz coming in)  His hair is 99% regrown or growing.  What helped, everything, nothing, we are not sure time will tell. He has lost (over the summer and recently) a lot of his lower right eyelashes. My husband says there are new ones growing in.  He understands that he could loose his hair again and is ok with it.  But for now what we seem to be doing is working.  So in my opinion,  not a medical one, but from a loving mom,the shots can't hurt along with less gluten, and vitamin D supplements.   His dermatologist will continue with the shots until 100% regrown.  Will it happen again once the shots are stopped...hopefully not.  A lot of people say that once they stop the shots their hair starts to fall out again. I wish you the best of luck! 

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Permalink Reply by cathy on November 22, 2015 at 2:04pm

I have recently received two rounds of injections. It did not help, in fact I notice more loss and wider spots not o mention the side effect, atrophy. dents in the scalp.

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Permalink Reply by icarus on November 22, 2015 at 5:30pm

Steroid injections do work, actually it is the most effective treatmen for Areata.

They mostly work with the classic, patchy type of AA which already has a good prognosis in general,

so it accelerates the regrowth of hair.

Severe cases of AA can be very recalcitrant to injections, its like "whipping a dead horse" as a derm said once to me.

In brief, they worked perfectly on me, but i had  grown quite a few fuzz hair already.

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