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Permalink Reply by Megan Jade on June 20, 2017 at 10:02am

Its rare but it can happen. I come from a big family and the other person who had a form of alopecia is my grandmother (Considering she had 9 kids and over 25 grand-children, my chances where low). I wouldn't worry to much in my opinion.  

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Permalink Reply by Stacie on June 20, 2017 at 10:46am

Your son will not catch alopecia from his half-brother.  Alopecia is not contagious.  Genes go from parent to child, not child to child.  

Most forms of alopecia are thought to have a genetic component that "triggers" hair loss.  But there are lots of types of alopecia and lots of types of triggers.  For example, genetic trait that must exist for androgenic alopecia to be triggered s likely different than the one for alopecia areata, and the manifestations of androgenic alopecia (male or female pattern baldness) and alopecia areata (patchy baldness) are different.

There's no way to test to see if someone will develop any type of alopecia and there's nothing that you can do to prevent it from occurring.  If your and your wife's family histories are clear of alopecia, then the odds that your son (or any other children from the union of you and your wife) will develop alopecia are probably low.  You really shouldn't worry about it.

IF there's a dormant gene that your son inherited from one or both of you, and IF it somehow gets triggered and IF your son develops alopecia -- that's a lot of IFs -- the best treatment is your love and support and compassion so that your son will be confident and self-assured no matter what's going on with his hair.

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