Feb 06, 2020 12:30:00

Hair may grow from the gums

by

vadymvdrobot

Many people suffer from misaligned teeth and wisdom teeth, but it has been reported that there are people around the world who suffer from a very rare case of ``hair growing from the gums.''

An unusual case of recurrent gingival hirsutism - Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology
https://www.oooojournal.net/article/S2212-4403(19)31380-X/fulltext

Woman Grows Hairs Out of Her Gums in Extremely Rare Medical Case
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-is-one-of-just-six-known-cases-of-people-who-grow-hair-from-their-gums

Woman sprouts eyelashes in her mouth due to rare condition
https://nypost.com/2020/02/05/woman-sprouts-eyelashes-in-her-mouth-due-to-rare-condition/

In 2009, doctors at Italy's

Luigi Vanvitelli University met a 19-year-old woman suffering from a very rare condition: hair growing from her gums. Inside the woman's mouth, brown eyelash-like hair was growing from the gums behind her upper front teeth.

When doctors investigated strange cases of ``hair growing from the gums,'' they found five cases since the 1960s, but all of the past cases were confirmed in men. is. Doctors could not immediately understand why hair grows from women's gums, since there are very few cases recorded in the literature.

by

seventyfourimages

However, after hormone tests and ultrasound tests, the woman was diagnosed with a disease called polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), in which the ovaries produce too much male hormone. PCOS is a disease that causes symptoms such as hormonal imbalance, making it difficult to ovulate, and in some cases, an excess of male hormones can lead to hirsutism .

Generally, hirsutism is a disease in which hair grows like a man's hair in areas where body hair already exists, such as the face, torso, and limbs, but in this case, it occurs in an unusual place called the gums. Hair was growing from it. Therefore, although it was possible that PCOS was not the direct cause, doctors determined that it was at least making the situation worse. As a result, the hair on her gums was surgically removed and she started taking oral contraceptives to address the hormonal imbalance, giving the woman freedom from hair in her mouth.

However, six years later, when the woman stopped taking the hormone, hair began to grow back from her gums. The following photos are photos of hair actually growing on a woman's gums and the hair after it has been pulled out. You can see that a few short eyelash-like hairs are growing from the gums.

During the second treatment, the medical team not only removed the hair, but also cut out some of the gum tissue and analyzed it. It was discovered that there are

hair follicles in the gums, from which hair grows. Although the detailed mechanism by which hair follicles are formed in the gums is unknown, the theory that hair follicles are formed in the mouth is based on the fact that during the embryonic stage, the mucous membrane tissue in the mouth is very closely related to the tissues that make up the skin. It's not difficult to imagine.

The research team pointed out that there is also a case where epidermal tissue grows in the mouth, called `` Fordyce spots ,'' where sebaceous glands that normally secrete sebum on the surface of the skin grow in the oral mucosa. Similarly, cases in which one type of tissue grows in a different location have been observed from time to time, so it is not impossible that hair grows from the gums as in this case.

There is no mention of whether the woman reported as a rare case has since returned to treatment with hormones. It is also unclear whether the condition of hair growing from the gums poses a health problem or is accompanied by discomfort.

by ThamKC