17-year-old white male complained of scalp problems for the preceding 8 months. Initially he developed a painful lesion, which looked like a blood blister, on the right posterior crown. It was believed to be a wrestling injury and was treated with topical antiseptics. This patient was an expert wrestler and competed frequently. At some point his tinea pedis (athlete’s foot) was treated with ter...

BACKGROUND β-catenin plays a pivotal role in hair follicle development and hair growth cycle. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify β-catenin-regulated genes in cultured human hair outer root sheath (ORS) cells. METHODS Primary cultured ORS cells were transduced with recombinant adenovirus expressing N-terminal truncated β-catenin (constitutive active form), and β-catenin-regulate...

Mechanosensory hair cells are susceptible to apoptotic death in response to exposure to ototoxic drugs, including aminoglycoside antibiotics. The c-Jun n-terminal kinase (JNK) is a stress-activated protein kinase that can promote apoptotic cell death in a variety of systems. Inhibition of the JNK signaling pathway can prevent aminoglycoside-induced death of cochlear and vestibular sensory hair ...

Evaluation of mercury exposure in an individual patient ideally includes the presenting history, physical examination, consideration of the differential diagnosis, and mercury analysis of blood and urine specimens. Analysis of mercury in hair specimens may supply useful supplemental information about exposure to organic compounds such as methylmercury, particularly to help reconstruct the patte...

www.aafp.org/afp AMERICAN FAMILY PHYSICIAN 2565 growth varies widely among women, and distinguishing normal variations of hair growth from hypertrichosis and true hirsutism is important. With hirsutism, terminal hair grows from androgen-sensitive pilosebaceous units. While 60 to 80 percent of women with hirsutism have increased levels of circulating androgens, degrees of hirsutism correlate poo...

Cadherin 23 (CDH23), a component of tip links in hair cells of vertebrate animals, is essential to mechanotransduction by hair cells in the inner ear. A homolog of CDH23 occurs in hair bundles of sea anemones. Anemone hair bundles are located on the tentacles where they detect the swimming movements of nearby prey. The anemone CDH23 is predicted to be a large polypeptide featuring a short exopl...

We found 6 spontaneous mutant mice with long pelage hair in our ICR breeding colony. The abnormal trait was restricted to long hair in these mice, which we named moja. They were fertile and showed the same growth and behavior as wild-type mice. To investigate the manner of the genetic inheritance of the moja allele, offspring were bred by mating the moja mice; all offspring had long pelage hair...

Although recent studies have provided evidence for hair cell regeneration in mammalian inner ears, the mechanism underlying this regenerative process is still under debate. Here we report immunocytochemical, histological, electron microscopic, and autoradiographic evidence that, in cultured postnatal rat utricles, a substantial number of hair cells can survive gentamicin insult even their stere...

Loss of E-cadherin has been associated with human cancers, and yet in the early mouse embryo and the lactating mammary gland, the E-cadherin null state results in tissue dysfunction and cell death. Here we targeted loss of E-cadherin in skin epithelium. The epidermal basal layer responded by elevating P-cadherin, enabling these cells to maintain adherens junctions. Suprabasal layers upregulated...