Nazilia Barahmani, Ph.D. and her colleagues have reported a very interesting observation. A man who had leukemia received a bone marrow transplant from his brother as a part of his leukemia treatment. It just so happened that the brother had alopecia areata. It also happened, by coincidence, that these brothers had the exact same HLA immunity genes, including one gene that has already been identified as a susceptibility gene for alopecia areata. Now the patient did very well-he had no evidence of rejection-and so his anti-injection medications were stopped. At that point he developed alopecia areata just like his brother had. This suggests that the white blood cells of a person with alopecia areata can cause alopecia areata in a genetically related person with the right susceptibility.

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