Drug-Induced Hair Pigmentation: Clinical Perspectives and Updates

This study highlights multiple factors contributing to hair graying, such as oxidative damage, melanocyte changes, and genetic influences, and suggests that repigmentation may be temporarily reversible, offering potential targets for future treatments while urging caution when applying mouse model findings to humans.

This review discusses new research on the role of retinoids in skin and hair health and reports no clinical results.

This study found that patients with premature greying of hair had significant abnormalities in cardiovascular risk markers, including elevated IL-6 levels, compared to healthy controls.

This review discusses valproate-associated hair abnormalities, describing their common and benign nature, and outlines management strategies, though new clinical results are not provided.

This case report describes canities subita, characterized by sudden hair whitening without hair loss, in a patient following a stressful event, suggesting an immune system involvement.

This review discusses premature graying of hair, highlighting risk factors like smoking and vitamin deficiencies, and suggests that addressing underlying conditions may reverse the graying process.

This study reported that stress can induce hair graying in mice through noradrenaline-mediated depletion of melanocyte stem cells in hair follicles, providing a mechanism that connects stress to hair color changes.

This review discusses medication-induced gray hair repigmentation, highlighting that certain anti-inflammatory drugs and melanogenesis stimulators can cause diffuse repigmentation, though evidence remains low-quality and these medications are not currently indicated for this purpose.

This review discusses the potential role of vitamins and minerals in managing non-scarring alopecia but reports no clinical results; the authors advocate for further controlled trials to explore these relationships.

This case report describes a patient with psoriasis who experienced scalp hair darkening and increased growth during anti–IL-17 therapy.

This article reviews therapy-related hair disorders in oncology patients, detailing underlying mechanisms and potential management strategies, but reports no new clinical findings.

This review discusses the role of immune privilege collapse in the pathogenesis of alopecia areata, emphasizing the potential for therapeutic manipulation of hair bulb immune privilege to offer new treatment options, and reports no new results.

This study reports no known changes in hair pigmentation associated with brentuximab vedotin, despite its various other documented adverse effects.

This review examines systemic drugs that can cause changes in hair color and emphasizes the importance of reporting these adverse events, but it does not include new clinical outcomes.

This letter to the editor discusses an observed case of hair repigmentation linked with etretinate therapy but reports no new research findings.

This report describes a patient experiencing hair repigmentation linked to adalimumab therapy, a TNF inhibitor, a phenomenon not previously associated with this class of drugs.

This article is a letter to the editor discussing hair graying and loss potentially induced by imatinib mesylate, but it does not provide new research results.

This case report describes repigmentation and curling of hair in a patient undergoing acitretin therapy.

This article reviews the impact of nutritional deficiencies on hair health, detailing how they can cause structural abnormalities, pigmentation changes, or hair loss; it presents no new clinical findings.

This case report describes an elderly multiple myeloma patient whose hair repigmentation was associated with lenalidomide use, suggesting hair graying may be reversible.

In this study, latanoprost significantly increased hair density in young men with mild androgenetic alopecia after 24 weeks, suggesting it may stimulate hair follicle activity and treat hair loss.

This letter reports repigmentation of hair in patients receiving latanoprost therapy.

This review observes that trichomegaly, a newly described side effect of EGFR inhibitors causing excessive eyelash and scalp hair growth, persists in some patients whose tumors respond positively to the therapy.

In this study, UVB irradiation of organ-cultured human anagen hair follicles in vitro reduced hair elongation and increased cell death, affecting hair growth and regulatory processes.

Valproic acid can cause hair loss, but information on hair color change is not detailed.

This study suggests that topical T3 can induce hair follicles to enter the growth phase and may reverse graying in mice, with in vitro results supporting enhanced hair shaft growth.

This article reviews drug-induced hair changes, highlighting that while many drugs are occasionally linked to hair loss, this connection has been conclusively established for only a few, and such hair loss is typically reversible.

This article reviews follicular melanogenesis, detailing how melanin synthesis and its regulation in hair follicles depend on a complex interplay of cellular and molecular mechanisms, but reports no new clinical findings.

This case report describes a black HIV-2 patient who experienced reversible nail, hair, and skin hyperpigmentation linked to ritonavir-boosted indinavir therapy, which resolved after discontinuation.

This study found that 87% of patients with stage IIA and IIB melanoma treated with low-dose alpha-interferon reported cutaneous side effects, with the most common being hair loss.

Imatinib can repigment grey hair, while SU11428 can cause temporary hair depigmentation.

This study found that while many drugs are reported to cause hair color changes, substantial evidence supporting a true relationship exists mainly for chloroquine and certain cancer chemotherapeutic agents.

Minoxidil lotion can cause hair discoloration.

Minoxidil caused red hair to grow on a man's temples.