Case series of familial frontal fibrosing alopecia and a review of the literature

Summary Frontal fibrosing alopecia (FFA) is a distinctive form of scarring alopecia presenting with partial eyebrow loss and frontal temporal parietal recession of the hairline. Its etiology remains unknown, and there is no definitive treatment. Information in familial cases of FFA is scarce. We conducted a retrospective cohort study describing the mean clinical findings, treatment, and also the mean differences between premenopausal and postmenopausal cases of familiar FFA. Data analysis from case was performed on eight patients with a familiar history and diagnosis of FFA seen at the Alicante Aesthetic Dermatology Centre between January 2009 and June 2014. All patients in this cohort were females. Mean age at onset was 65 year (range 60–75) in the postmenopausal patients and 39 year (range 33–47) in the premenopausal women. All menopausal patients were in an advanced stage when the disease had already developed in the frontal and/or temporal parietal hairline region. However, the daughters, all of them premenopausal age, attended the consultation with mild involvement of the eyebrows in all four cases and mild impairment of the frontal hairline in three of them. Specific clinical findings in familial FFA are poorly communicated until nowadays although the number of familial cases arises until 8% in the main case series published in recent years. Early diagnosis in premenopausal stage is frequent in our case series and allows us to begin the protocol treatment in the first stage of the disease, but long‐term progression will remain uncertain until a definitive treatment could be established by multicenter randomized controlled trials.