Hair Pluck Test
From Anvita Health Wiki
Introduction
- The hair pluck test is performed to distinguish anagen from telogen effluvium.
- Hairs by grasping about 50 with a rubber-tipped forceps, rotating one turn & pulling upwards, plucking the hairs. The hair is cut about 1 cm from the root, placed on a wet-mount microscope slide & viewed at 10X. DACA (4-dimethylaminocinnamaldehye) reacts with an internal root sheath amino acid allowing differentiation of anagen from telogen hairs. Telogen hairs have small avoid bulbs that do not stain with DACA because they lack a sheath, whereas anagen hairs have larger bulbs surrounded by a brightly red- stained sheath. Normally only 10-15% of hairs are telogen hairs. In telogen effluvium, 30-60% of hairs of telogen hairs; in anagen effluvium, 100% are telogen hairs.
More General Terms
References
Saunders Manual of Medical Practice, Rakel (ed), WB Saunders, Philadelphia, 1996, pg 918
