A 5-year-old girl child presented with abnormal patch of hair since 2 years of age. Her parents noticed a single patch of curling and coiling of hair along with altered texture over the left side of scalp. Her parents felt the patch to be unruly and unsightly and hence attempted repeated tonsuring. In spite of this, the patch of hair remained the same. Birth and development history of the child was normal. Her family members did not have similar complaints. On examination, we noticed a solitary circumscribed patch of size 6×4 cm located over the left frontoparietal region of scalp. The hair over the patch had an altered texture, was lighter in color, thinner, tightly coiled, and curled giving an unkempt appearance []. The skin over the patch was apparently normal. Examination of rest of the scalp, teeth and nails were also normal. There was no evidence of palmoplantar keratoderma and evidence of any epidermal nevus elsewhere. Ophthalmic and cardiac evaluation did not reveal any abnormality. There was no evidence of precocious puberty. Based on the above findings, we arrived at a diagnosis of localized woolly hair nevus. Hair microscopic examination showed non-specific features. Scalp biopsy revealed normal hair follicles and appendages []. Routine hemogram, serum biochemistry, electrocardiogram and echocardiogram were normal.
We report the case of a 27-year-old healthy male who presented with an area of curlier and thinner hair than the rest of his scalp localized on the right parietal area. He referred that just at that location, his hair had been different since childhood, curlier than the rest. Physical examination revealed a plaque with shorter and curlier hair on an area of 10 cm in diameter on the right parietal area of the scalp. A decreased density of hair was observed. The skin on the patch was apparently healthy. There were not exclamation mark hairs or miniaturization of hair follicles. A hair pull test was negative []. A skin biopsy showed a mild perifollicular lymphocytic infiltrate, telangiectatic capillaries in the superficial dermis and several terminal hair follicles emerged in the same dilated follicular infundibulum. Interestingly, an excessive amount of normal apocrine glands were found in the deep reticular dermis. Counting of hair follicles was normal [Figure –]. Based on clinical appearance and histopathologic studies, a diagnosis of WHN was established.