2023-10-19 17:22:00
“Due to alopecia areata I lost all my hair in 10 minutes. I was only 31 years old.” Claudia Cassia, president of Aipaf – Italian Association of Alopecia Patients and Friends Odv, does not mince words and gets straight to the point in telling her story of a rare patient forced to wear a wig to hide the signs of the disease. Wig that the patient removes in front of the Undersecretary of Health Gemmato on the occasion of the presentation of “Alopecia Areata Day”, an initiative presented to the Ministry of Health to make it clear what the approximately 118 thousand Italians affected by the pathology are faced with.
“We patients hide, especially at the onset of the genetic and autoimmune disease, because we don’t recognize ourselves in the mirror without hair, eyelashes or eyebrows – he tells time.news Salute – the expressions of our face change and our personality changes. We have the right to be treated as much as people affected by other diseases”.
For the president of Aipaf “certainly being here at the Ministry of Health is a huge achievement because we are finally talking about alopecia areata, a disease that is still taboo for many. But let’s be clear, it is not just an aesthetic problem. It is a very particular disease and terrible to experience. Especially when it affects the little ones. This summer there were episodes involving some children who got out of the pool water for fear of being infected by their hairless peers. Well, Aipaf has been involved for years , even in schools, to help children with alopecia areata to be accepted and, above all, not to feel guilty about their disease”.
Finally on the therapy to keep the disease under control: “This year we are very happy to announce the arrival of Baricitinib, the first specific therapy. Furthermore, the first national registry of patients with this disease was born from Alopecia Areata Day”.
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