Chronic non-scarring folliculitis among Saudi adult patients: clinicopathological features and literature review

28 INTRODUCTION Folliculitis is an inflammatory reaction in the superficial aspect of the hair follicle and can involve the follicular opening or the perifollicular hair follicles.1 There are controversies regarding the classification of folliculitis. It has been classified according to the causative factors either infectious folliculitis or noninfectious folliculitis, the other way of classification is according to the histopathology features specially the inflammatory cell types and depth of follicular inflammation.2,3,4,5 The pilosebaceous unit of the follicle is divided into three compartments: the infundibulum (superficial part, outlined by the sebaceous duct), the isthmus (between the sebaceous duct and arrector pili protuberance), and the inferior segment (stem and hair bulb).1 Chronic non-scarring folliculitis of the scalp6 is a relatively common condition in dermatological practice, but is also a major diagnostic and therapeutic challenge, due to the lack of exact guidelines and the hypotheses ORIGINAL ARTICLE