Nail involvement in patients with moderate-to-severe alopecia areata treated with oral tofacitinib

Abstract

Background: A few anecdotal case reports demonstrated that tofacitinib improved nail changes associated with AA.

Objective: To investigate nail changes in patients with AA treated with tofacitinib and evaluate the relationship between nail and hair responses to tofacitinib.

Methods: This is a retrospective study of 33 adult patients with moderate-to-severe AA treated with oral tofacitinib monotherapy for at least 4 months.

Results: Fifteen patients had nail involvement and demonstrated more severe hair loss than those without nail involvement (p = .040). However, there was no significant difference in hair regrowth between two groups. Of 15 patients with nail involvement, 11 (73.3%) showed improvement regardless of type of nail change; the first improvement was observed at a median of 5 months (range, 1–11) after administration. Nail improvement was associated with neither initial severity of hair loss nor hair response to tofacitinib. Nail improvement tended to occur later than hair regrowth.

Conclusions: Oral tofacitinib monotherapy improves nail involvement associated with AA. Nail involvement is not a poor prognosis factor in hair regrowth with tofacitinib treatment and there is no evident relationship between nail and hair responses.

Keywords:

• Nail
• alopecia areata
• tofacitinib
• janus kinase inhibitor
• onychodystrophy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.