Culprit gene behind childhood baldness found

Beijing, China, January 6: Chinese scientists have discovered a DNA mechanism that gives birth to childhood baldness i.e. Maria Unna hereditary hypotrichosis (MUHH).

Dr. Xue Zhang and colleagues from Peking Union Medical College, Beijing said that problems in the gene U2HR cause MUHH i.e. hair loss during childhood. They analyzed genome of 19 Chinese families suffering from MUHH for the research.

U2HR, located on Chromosome 8, is predicted to encode a 34–amino acid peptide i.e. a kind of mini protein that in turn affects human hairless homolog (HR). The researchers said, “... identified a range of defects in U2HR, including loss of initiation, delayed termination codon and nonsense and missense mutations. Functional analysis showed that these classes of mutations all resulted in increased translation of the main HR physiological ORF.”

They concluded, “Our results establish the link between MUHH and U2HR, show that fine-tuning of HR protein levels is important in control of hair growth, and identify a potential mechanism for preventing hair loss or promoting hair removal.”

MUHH, also known as congenital atrichia, is a rare inherited disease. Absent of eyebrows and eyelashes, loss of hair, poor nail growth, sparse armpit hair and pubic hair are the symptoms of MUHH. The patients of MUHH have sparse or no hair at birth and grow more hairy during childhood but start losing hair progressively at puberty.

This baldness disease is named after German dermatologist Maria Unna, who first identified the problem calling it hypotrichosis congenital hereditaria.

The authors said that this new study may one day help to find a cure for the disease and for baldness in general. It offers hope for youngsters who inherit the mutation so that they will one day be able to keep their hair.

The study was published online in the journal Nature Genetics.