Sesame and Pumpkin Seed Oil are New Effective Topical Therapies for Alopecia Areata

摘要

Background: There are numerous topical and systemic therapies for alopecia areata. Pumpkin seed oil and sesame oilare edible food stuff, but they have many active therapeutic agents that could be useful in treatment of inflammatory diseases like alopecia areata. Objectives: To find new topical treatment for alopecia areata using plants extracts like pumpkin seed oil and sesame oil. Patients and methods : This interventional, single blinded comparative, therapeutic study conducted in Center of Dermatology, Medical City-Baghdad, Iraq during the period between September 2017 and September 2018. Forty patients, with patchy alopecia areata were enrolled with a total number of lesions were 122 patches. History and examination were done for each patient regarding all socio-demographics points related to the disease. The patients were divided into 2 groups according to type of treatment: Group using topical pumpkin seed oil: twenty patients with 58 patches were included in this group and topical pumpkin seed oil was applied twice daily to the patches, treatment continued for three months. Group B using topical sesame oil: twenty patients with 64 patches were enrolled in this group and topical sesame oil was applied to the patches twice a day for three months duration. All patients were seen every month to assess the response to treatment and to record the side effects. Results: Group A with topical pumpkin seed oil: at the end of third month of treatment 27(46.6%) of treated patches showed complete hair regrowth, 14(24.13%) patches with partial terminal hair regrowth, while 17(29.31%) patches not showed any hair regrowth. Group B with topical sesame oil: twenty five (39.1%) of treated patches demonstrated complete hair regrowth at the end of third month of treatment while 30 (46.87%) patches with partial course hair regrowth, 7(10.9%) patches with partial fine hair, and only 2(3.1%) patches did not show any hair regrowth. Both groups were showed statistically significant response at the end of three months with P <0.00006 for group A, while for group B was p <0.000003. But when the two groups compared with each other at the end of three months, there was no statistically significantly difference P=0.24. Conclusion: Pumpkin seed oil and sesame oil are statistically significant effective new topical treatment for alopecia areata with no statistically significant difference between the two groups and they are safe drugs without any side effects as they are both edible agents.