Medical Center Professor Discovers Genetic Basis for Hair Loss

"Physician, heal thyself." That oft-quoted proverb describes the ground-breaking effort by Columbia professor Angela Christiano to discover the cause of the second most common form of hair loss after male-pattern baldness. In 1996, Christiano's hair suddenly began falling out, leaving her scalp riddled with bald patches. The condition was diagnosed as alopecia areata, which affects about 2 percent of the population overall including more than 5.3 million people in the United States. Professor Angela Christiano talks about the challenges of living with alopecia areata and her ongoing research focusing on controlling the disease. As she struggled with the disease, Christiano, who is affiliated with the Dermatology and the Genetics and Development departments at Columbia University Medical Center , decided to study hair loss. "I looked at the literature and realized how little was known about genes that control hair growth," she says.