Browsing by Author "Blen Yosef"

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    Quality of life assessment in patients with Alopecia Areata
    (Addis Ababa Uinverstiy, 2025) Blen Yosef; Ahmed Mohammed; Mihretu Woldeyes
    Alopecia Areata (AA) is a non-scarring, autoimmune hair loss disease that has the same sex distribution, and an estimated prevalence of 1-6.7 percent by the general population. It is chronic and may greatly diminish quality of life (QoL). Objective: This study was aimed at measuring QoL among AA patients at the ALERT hospital Dermatovenerology clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study on 68 AA patients (May-Oct 2025). The Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) was used to measure QoL. Checklist was used to gather data and analyzed using SPSS 27. Median (IQR) and frequency (%) are used to present continuous and categorical data, respectively. Tests of associations were performed on Mann Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis H, and Spearman correlation test (significance: p<0.05). Result: The mean age of the respondents (69.1% females) was 29.4 +- 11.6 years. Most (63.6%) were aged 16-34. The average length of disease was 12.67 +- 15.70 months. Nearly all (97.1%) had patchy AA. The average SALT score was 4.54 +- 3.62; all the cases mild (SALT<25%). Median DLQI score was 7 (IQR: 4-11). Younger age, high SALT score (p=0.043), disease duration (p=0.043), prevalence of scalp involvement (p=0.019) and positive family history were significantly correlated with higher DLQI (worse QoL). Conclusion: AA has a significant effect on deteriorating QoL. The worse impact is associated with the younger age, higher SALT scores, and longer duration of disease, beyond scalp involvement, and positive family history. Psychosocial burden of AA is not only cosmetic and, therefore, needs to be addressed in healthcare.