Chaudhry Ma, Ashraf T, Zeeshan N, Hanif A, Khan Ma, Ghazanfar I.
Association Of Smoking With Baldness And Graying Of Hair Among Male Adults.
Biomedica Jan ;34(1):53-6.

Background and Objectives: Smoking is a global health problem responsible for significant diseases that may lead to morbidity as well as mortality. Smoking has also been associated with gray hair and baldness in recent studies. Very limited data is available regarding association of smoking or tobacco use with premature graying of hair in our community, therefore, this study was designed to see any potential effect of smoking on graying of hair and baldness. Methods: This analytical cross sectional study was conducted on 398 male subjects keeping prevalence of premature gray hair as 50.2% and 5% error. Non-Probability convenient sampling was used to collect data. The volunteer subjects were briefed about the purpose of research and questionnaire. After collection of data, it was entered and analyzed in SPSS version 20. Mean and Standard deviation were used to mention age, whereas, frequency and percentages were reported for qualitative variables. Chi Square test was used to see association between graying of hair and baldness, with smoking and other potential risk factors. Results: The mean age of males was 36.50 ± 12.11 years with minimum and maximum ages of 17.00 and 72.00 years respectively. Out of total 398 subjects, 317 (79.6%) had gray hair among whom 172 (54.3%) reported that the onset of gray hair was at less than 30 years of age. There were 209 (52.5%) males who reported baldness and among them the onset of baldness in 99 (52.0%) subjects was at less than 30 years of age. A statistically significant association was found between baldness and smoking (p-value < 0.001). Also, a significant association was found of baldness with family history of gray hair (p-value = 0.007), with family history of baldness (p-value < 0.001), thyroid disease (p-value = 0.043), and vitiligo (p-value = 0.041). However, gray hairs were not associated with any of these risk factors. Conclusion: Our study concludes that premature hair graying and baldness has become quite common in our population. Though smoking has significant contribution in baldness, some other factors such as family history of gray hair and baldness, thyroid disease and vitiligo cannot be ignored as they also have significant association with baldness but not with gray hair.

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