hair pluck test

Indications

• distinguishing anagen effluvium from telogen effluvium

Procedure

• hairs are obtained by grasping about 50 with a rubber-tipped forceps, rotating one turn & pulling upwards, plucking the hairs
• the hair is cut about 1 cm from the root, placed on a wet-mount microscope slide & viewed at 10X
• DACA (4-dimethylaminocinnamaldehye) reacts with an internal root sheath amino acid allowing differentiation of anagen from telogen hairs
  • telogen hairs have small avoid bulbs that do not stain with DACA because they lack a sheath, whereas anagen hairs have larger bulbs surrounded by a brightly red-stained sheath

Interpretation

• normally only 10-15% of hairs are telogen hairs
• in telogen effluvium, 30-60% of hairs of telogen hairs
• in anagen effluvium, 100% are telogen hairs

More general terms

• clinical procedure