Is alopecia androgenitica passed on if the mother has it and we have a daughter?

Question

My partner and I are expecting our first child shortly and she suffers from alopecia. It was under control with the use of the contraceptive pill and minoxydil, but I was wondering whether it will be passed on to our child. My side of the family has no history of any baldness as far as I can remember

Answer 1

Male-pattern baldness does have a hereditary component, and it's at least in some way linked to the X-chromosome that your wife will pass down to the kid. If you have a boy baby, he will be more likely to develop hair loss, because it's triggered by androgens like testosterone,and also because he only has one X-chromosome. A girl, who has the XX sex chromosome, is more likely to have the bald gene (which is recessive) be masked by the dominant normal gene, which you will presumably provide.

Basically I don't know, is what it boils down to. The odds are greater that your kid may have some hair loss than a kid with no balding parents, but they are by no means 100%.

Answer 2

The simple answer is that there is no definative answer.
The genetic side may set up a propensity. However it often needs an environmental trigger.

My view is that by time your child is old enough to worry about androgenetic alopecia, it will be fully treatable. There have been massive advances in our understanding of it over the last decade.