Hello everybody….
This post is a little different…and will surely poke the Neurons!😋
We all know that spinal dysraphism syndromes present with the external manifestation of a tuft of Hair….ever wondered why?🤔
Well there is active research going on in this field and very little is known about it..but from the articles already published and by reading different books I tried to consolidate it….and hope it’s easy to understand too….
So let’s start with development of hair…and understand why all of it gets concentrated at one place…? Hair development is the result of neuroectodermal-mesodermal interactions …..and signalling.(meaning we have the cells forming the nervous tissue plus the soft tissue cells which will take part in the development of Hair). The spacing, orientation and density various other patterns of Hair are driven by activators which incite the development of hair… are established…. by the skin epithelium and mesenchyme. Now an important concept ..hair development is under the dominant-negative influence of inhibitors of the hair follicles….. meaning the hair follicle has to overcome a lot of local negative influence in order to develop….if it were not so we would have had hair everywhere…like we have it on our scalp….😨 Which would be weird🐏Hence the differentiation pathway must be locally negated by specific antagonists and/or overriden by stimulators of hair formation. If this process is successful we have development if hair follicles in that area…So in this senario …we need the wnt pathway to function....for spacing and proper differentiation of Hair….. (WNT gene)
The neural tube defects have been known for disturbed wnt pathway… Locally which leads to improper closure of mesenchyme forming the vertebra and improper signalling leading to improper differentiation of hair follicles on the above skin and forming A TUFT OF HAIR.☺
I hope this post was helpful.
Do let me know if I missed anything above or if you have more information on the topic. Happy to learn😀
-Medha😉
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