Hypertrichosis

Mutation Story

Hello, I am a gene in a 15 year old boy named Charles. Charles has a hypertrichosis genetic disorder, this mutation causes abnormal amounts of hair growth above the proper age, sex, and race of an individual and grows hair everywhere around the body. It is also known as “werewolf syndrome” only when there is a serious case of hypertrichosis because the amount of hair that is all over the victims body it makes them start to look like a mythical werewolf. The cause for hypertrichosis is unknown. It is believed that congenital hypertrichosis is inherited from the parents or is the outcome of a spontaneous mutation. Acquired hypertrichosis lanuginosa on the other hand is caused later on in life when someone has been diagnosed with some form of cancer. It is still unknown to why this form of cancer would present that amount of hair growth.

                                      

Now lets talk a little bit about Charles’s life story… He was born as any baby boy, healthy and perfectly normal. He lived in California and went to school at Arrowhead Elementary, he made many friends and loved to play all sports but mostly basketball, he would practice every day after school. However he wasn’t the best student, he would get C’s in almost every class but it was just elementary school. Years go by and he is now doing well in school and is on the basketball team at his new middle school, but sadly near the end of grade 8 he was diagnosed with hypertrichosis. At the time he didn’t know what was going on, he thought as if the crazy hair growth was all puberty and he was finally becoming a man but he was wrong… A week goes by and he starts to grow hair worse than ever before. He tells his parents and immediately goes to the doctor to find out what was the real cause of all this hair growth. This is when his life gets difficult, all the normal years in middle school are gone and now he must go to high school with this new genetic disorder. He loses all his friends during the first week of high school and gets bullied every day. After a year he finally seems happy again, hes finally accepted the disorder and has made new friends that are comfortable with his hair.

The doctors have still not found a cure for hypertrichosis so for now Charles will have to deal with it. However there are some treatments you can use but are not permanent. Minoxidil is a common treatment for preventing hair loss and drugs such as ciclosporin and phenytoin. Those are just a couple of examples of treatments for extreme hair growth.

http://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/hypertrichosis/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12444804

*There weren’t many websites that had valuable information*

 

The Making of Mutation Story

Ask:

Some questions I asked to find out about hypertrichosis was:

What is hypertrichosis?

How is hypertrichosis caused?

How does hypertrichosis affect the body?

Is there a cure for hypertrichosis?

Are you born with hypertrichosis or does it come later in life?

Acquire:

The digital tools i used to investigate and find information was:

Google

Wikipedia

Other websites found after using the search engine

Analyze:

Each question that i was curious about did happen to be solved after surfing the internet. When i googled i found the answers to all my questions and a lot of information i didn’t know and didn’t even think about including into my story. An easy way i found extra information after i was done answering all my questions was to simply type “hypertrichosis” in the search engine and to look at a couple of the websites at the top of the page.

Assess: 

Overall the process of this story went fairly smoothly, there were no problems. Sometimes it was hard to find valuable information because of the lack of websites that talked about hypertrichosis as a whole. I am happy with how the story came out and i feel like it has good information that people can learn about and maybe relate to if they happen to obtain this disease. Some things i would do if i were to do this again i would read more carefully an get a better understanding about the genetic disorder. What i also really wanted to do was to look through many websites and find more information and maybe even add a video in the story of someone with hypertrichosis or some kind of doctor explaining this disorder.