Light Brown Hair Research Articles

Stephen Foster and the Slavery Question

Stephen Foster and the Slavery Question

Association Between Alopecia Areata and Natural Hair Color Among White Individuals.

Alopecia areata (AA) is a complex immune-mediated disorder that causes nonscarring hair loss. Previous reports have documented preferential targeting of pigmented hair follicles with sparing of gray, nonpigmented hair follicles in alopecia lesions. Thus, immune targeting of melanogenesis-associated proteins in melanocytes and keratinocytes represents a potential mechanism for the inflammation that targets anagen hairs in alopecia areata. To investigate the association of alopecia areata with hair color among White residents of the UK. This matched, case-control study conducted in October 2020 used a large prospectively acquired cohort and included data that were collected from the UK Biobank, a large-scale prospective resource designed to study phenotypic and genotypic determinants in adults. A total of 502 510 UK Biobank participants were reviewed for inclusion. Among these individuals, 1673 cases of alopecia areata with reported hair color were captured and matched by age and sex to 6692 controls without alopecia areata using 1:4 matching. Conditional logistic regression analysis was performed, in which the outcome variable was alopecia areata and the main predictor was natural hair color before graying. The variables considered included diabetes, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and vitiligo. Of 464 353 participants, 254 505 (54.8%) were women, and the mean (SD) age for those with alopecia areata was 46.9 (16.5) years. Alopecia areata was significantly more common in individuals with black (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.97; 95% CI, 2.38-3.71) and dark brown hair (aOR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.11-1.42) compared with light brown hair. In contrast, blond individuals exhibited significantly decreased alopecia areata compared with those with light brown hair (aOR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.56-0.85). Red hair color was not significantly different from light brown hair. The findings of this matched case-control study seem to indicate that alopecia areata is modulated by natural hair color, preferentially targeting darker hair. Our results support a previously proposed model of alopecia areata in which immunity is directed against melanogenesis-associated proteins in the anagen hair follicles. However, further study is needed to more precisely understand the immunopathogenic association between alopecia areata and hair color.

Hasselblad: Triptych

Hasselblad:Triptych Ananda Lima (bio) I There was Michele, and there was the girl. Michele held the door open. The girl carried an oversized backpack and wore frameless sunglasses with golden mirrored lenses. Michele could see a version of herself reflected on them, distorted, bathed in gold. A few strands of the girl's light brown hair swayed with the breeze and shaped themselves as a moving frame around her face. The girl twisted her backpack off, leaning back and bending her knees slightly, which made visible the slender tone of her thighs. Her movements seemed part of a practice that had to be learned, like martial arts. Like dancing. Michele's body sensed a vague recollection of that motion but felt more presently the smooth round brass door handle in her palm. In that bright outside light, the skin on the back of her hand looked dry and papery. Four sunspots formed a loose trail around her knuckles. Michele let her fingers slide off the doorknob. Her arms hung down limply as the girl embraced her. ________ Michele and the girl were at the kitchen table having tea. The girl held a caramel filled cookie with the tips of her long thin fingers. She frowned a little then smiled, brushing some crumbs from the corner of her mouth, incapable of making an ungainly gesture. Michele almost picked up a cookie, but stopped herself and sipped her tea. The girl talked about how Paris was for tourists and how she should have gone to Berlin instead. Then about a man, a lover, though she didn't call him that, with whom she had parted a few months ago. She had left him in Paris. Something in him had attracted her, she said, she didn't know what, maybe his crooked nose, or his broody mood, or the way he always looked irritated at her but could not resist her. But in the end, those things ceased to be amusing, she said. She'd been bored of his monologues and diatribes on the emptiness of the art they went to see in the museums, his saying "derivative" with those cutting British ts. And how possessive he was. So she decided to leave him one morning, just like that. "I hadn't closed the curtains after all the fighting the night before, and the sun woke me up," the girl said. "I looked at him while he slept." The girl looked out the window, and Michele followed her gaze as if they were both watching the boy resting his head on his pillow. "He was cute, but I was so sick of him. So much work." She sipped her tea, shaking her head slightly. "I had enough." She put her cookie down now and proceeded to talk about how she had disentangled herself from under his arm, afraid he would wake up, but his arm just flopped and settled comfortably on the mattress. "I thought he might be dead. I poked him, then put my finger under his nose and felt his breathing. God, I was relieved!" The pitch of her voice was higher now. She took another bite of her cookie and laughed. Michele laughed a little too, not knowing why, catching it from the girl like a yawn. She looked [End Page 187] so young right then. Her appearance alternated between a child and an adult, depending on the angle and expression. "I looked around the room, thought about my things in the closets… and felt lazy." She smiled. "He moved his arm again and I freaked. I was so happy he didn't wake up. I thought, this is it, here is my chance. I found my shorts, but couldn't find my shirt. So I grabbed his, and my camera bag, my wallet, my sunglasses and I was out. I went down that spiral staircase so fast. I felt dizzy." The girl giggled. "Downstairs, it was sunny and warm. I walked along the river for hours. I felt light. I felt, you know, free." Michele could trace the shape of the girl's feelings inside her, an outline somewhere in her chest, a path carved by a stream...

Does Eumelanin Oxidation Play a Role on the Photostability of Ethyl Glucuronide in Hair Exposed to Simulated Solar Radiation?

The action of solar radiation on the concentration of the ethanol metabolite ethyl glucuronide (EtG) in 40 hair samples of nonabstinent subjects was investigated. Hair samples of different colors were analyzed before and after irradiation with artificial sunlight under a light dose corresponding to 3 months of sun exposure. After irradiation, an increase of EtG concentration was detected in 55% of the samples ranging from 5% to 141%. In 16 cases, a concentration reduction ranging from -2% to -74% was observed. The measure of the level of pyrrole-2,3,5-tricarboxylic acid (PTCA), a marker of eumelanin oxidation, demonstrated the largest increase in oxidation in light brown hair where the greatest degradation of EtG was observed after irradiation. However, the rise of PTCA in all hair tested was accompanied by increase in EtG concentration in 8/10 samples and by decrease in 2/10, suggesting no correlation between the two markers. To verify if hair structure was modified by light, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis was performed on irradiated hair of different colors and compared with the dark samples. SEM revealed modification of hair structure in all samples showing partial shaft exfoliation and reduction of hair thickness under the treatment with solar radiation.

Red Hair Color Is Associated with Elevated CRP Levels among US Women

Red Hair Color Is Associated with Elevated CRP Levels among US Women

FEATURES OF THE "VERBAL PORTRAIT" OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN CAUCASIANS OF RUSSIA, COMPILED FROM THE BACK OF THE HEAD

The article is devoted to the search for differential diagnostic features of appearance that allow an expert level to judge whether an unknown person belongs to the Central or southern local Caucasian race, which is important in the practice of identity identification. Research material: verbal description of the appearance of 116 Central and 64 southern Europeans (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians; Avars, Abkhazians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Dargins, Ingush, Kabardins, Lezgins, Ossetians, etc.). The description of the appearance was made from the back of the head according to the original method, which includes 15 features. Methods of variation statistics were used to process the data obtained. Diagnostic coefficients were calculated for statistically significantly different values (p<0.05). It was found that black hair (8,2), low level of hair growth (3,1), post-traumatic deformation of the auricles (2,1), and hair growth in a counterclockwise curl (2,0) are the most typical for southern Caucasians. Central Caucasians are characterized by light brown (-14,7) or light brown hair (-4,1), moles or freckles on the back of the head or neck (-3,4) egg-shaped head (-2,1), high hair growth (-2,1). It is shown that the set of features allows us to achieve a practically reliable level of solving the problem of the local racial type of an unknown person. A distinctive feature and advantage of the developed feature system is the ability to solve an expert problem in situations where the most informative area in terms of race and diagnostics-the face – is destroyed (if we are talking about an unidentified corpse) or hidden from CCTV cameras (if we are talking about a criminal hiding his appearance).

A Phenotypically Variable Presentation of Albinism: A Case Report

Background: Albinism refers to a group of hereditary conditions, present at birth, that are characterized by gene mutations resulting in hypopigmentation of the skin, hair, and ocular structures. There are two categories of albinism distinguished by the mode of inheritance as well as the body structures affected: Oculocutaneous Albinism and Ocular Albinism. Case Report A 10 year old Caucasian-Hispanic female was referred to the Low Vision Clinic withvision impairment secondary to albinism, a diagnosis confirmed by the Electrophysiology Department two years prior. Ancillary testing supporting albinism included Visual Evoked Potentials (VEPs) demonstrating abnormal optic nerve fiber decussation and optical coherence tomography (OCT) revealing foveal hypoplasia. Clinical findings consistent with albinism included strabismus with reduced stereopsis, mild but diffuse iris transillumination defects and blonde fundi. The patient had physical characteristics of fair skin, light brown hair, and had normal color vision, moderately reduced visual acuity, and absence of nystagmus, suggesting a mild phenotypic variation of albinism. At her low vision evaluation, the patient appreciated improvement in visual function with the following devices: a dome magnifier for magnification at near, a handheld telescope for magnification at distance, and a light grey tint to reduce photophobia indoors. Additional accommodations were recommended to the school system to employ while in the classroom setting. Conclusion: Clinicians should consider the diagnosis of albinism in patients with reduced vision even when they demonstrate mostly normal skin and ocular pigmentation. Clinical cases associated with a better acuity in albinism patients include some presence of stereoacuity, mild strabismus, absence of nystagmus and near normal levels of iris pigmentation, like the patient described in the case report. Despite the level of visual impairment, the standard of care for patients with decreased vision or visual symptoms should always be a low vision evaluation in order to maximize functional vision.

The Sleeping Girl

21 SKYE ANICCA The Sleeping Girl Fairy Tale Review Award in Prose Selected by Kathryn Davis  Of “The Sleeping Girl,” esteemed final judge Kathryn Davis writes: Most stories you walk into; you think you’re walking into this story but this story walks into you. This story has been happening for a very long time, the engine driving it operating for hours or weeks, maybe even years—the “length of a horizon.” Like in one of Isak Dinesen’s marvelous tales: you think you know where you’re going and then the story propels you out the other side of it and you actually think you’ve landed in the familiar world, dumbstruck. The marvel of this story is the perversity of its vision. Where does the familiar world lie, the world where to sleep is to be tucked in safe? How does the world lie to us? What do we have to have stolen from us, what do we have to steal, to earn that tucked-in sleep? In “The Sleeping Girl” time is the element from which morality beckons. You’d better read this story more than once. You’d better read it at least three times. Even so, you’re never getting out of it. 22 The Sleeping Girl But the Countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority, as if she were dreaming it. In her dream, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible. —Angela Carter, “The Lady of the House of Love” Those whom fortune favors Find good luck even in their sleep. —Giambattista Basile, “Sun, Moon, and Talia” he girl hadn’t moved in at least fifteen hours, but Myra attempted to organize her thoughts away from worry. She remembered that in her twenties, endless sleep had seemed appropriate. Myra had not yet seen the girl’s face. She’d been shown to the sea-grass hut late last night by a man who vanished into the brackish darkness as if he’d never been. Myra’s restless night, which marked her first week abroad, had been bounded by the steady cadence of the ocean and the clues to her roommate ’s identity: light brown hair captured in a messy ponytail and the top of a pink T-shirt, otherwise covered by a light sheet. Despite the worries that flitted opportunistically around her mind—Diabetic shock? Murder victim arranged prettily?—Myra had no trouble imagining why a traveling girl might wish to sleep the length of a horizon. On the beach the following morning, Myra didn’t swim. Though the water was the aqua of a postcard, she had heard too much about riptides and man-o-wars, floats of transparent jellyfish with electric blue tendrils. (At the hostel near the airport, a smooth-chested surfer had brandished his legs, welted with stings the size of hard-boiled eggs.) Of course, there were a zillion ways to be wounded; Myra had considered that traveling did little to affect her odds. Nonetheless, she avoided the water, instead walking the length of the white sand beach that stretched from the “eco-resort” she had chosen as home for the next few days. The resort was basic—several clusters of windowless structures, a few open grass palapas for shade, a fish ’n’ chips restaurant with long wooden tables t 23 where strangers were forced to eat together. With the exception of the sleeping girl, Myra had seen no other tourists. A vendor followed behind her along the shore, laboriously pushing his cart through the sand. Coco! Agua de Coca! Coca Cola! he chanted as he walked, though Myra was alone on the beach in the heat of the day. Out of embarrassment, she bought a coconut. She watched as its hard shell cracked under the force of the man’s machete. A second knife sliced the supple white meat inside. The vendor held up half a squeezed lime and an unmarked bottle of red sauce. Myra shrugged, preoccupied with the knife that might have been rusty, and certainly wasn’t clean. Her thoughts strayed where they would: How easy it would have been for the vendor to slice...

CHEVY CHASE DC

CHEVY CHASE DC James Toupin (bio) The covenants ran with the land,streams of a river gone undergroundto sustain the grantor's warrant of value—no Negroes no Semites permitted forever—until, a score of years before I moved in,a shift of justice dammed up that flow. When I declared myself it made almosta queer coming-out—"I always thought youthe very essence of a WASP"—for a guywell past six feet, with light brown straight hair,blue eyes, fair skin, surname not one of thoseGerman monikers that hereabouts finger a Jew. But I bought into the tract well afterI ceased to be banned. I am bound to wonderwhether I would have wormed my way in,for my piece of land submerging my taint,no mensch, to fool them into letting me buywhile letting them think they kept their value. A fountain still honors the founder.The synagogue sits across a border street. [End Page 116] James Toupin James Toupin is a retired general counsel of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He teaches in American University's law school. His poetry has appeared widely in journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review (online), Beloit Poetry Journal, and Nimrod. He is translator of Selected Letters of Alexis de Tocqueville on Politics and Society. Copyright © 2019 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

The Sleeping Girl

21 SKYE ANICCA The Sleeping Girl Fairy Tale Review Award in Prose Selected by Kathryn Davis  Of “The Sleeping Girl,” esteemed final judge Kathryn Davis writes: Most stories you walk into; you think you’re walking into this story but this story walks into you. This story has been happening for a very long time, the engine driving it operating for hours or weeks, maybe even years—the “length of a horizon.” Like in one of Isak Dinesen’s marvelous tales: you think you know where you’re going and then the story propels you out the other side of it and you actually think you’ve landed in the familiar world, dumbstruck. The marvel of this story is the perversity of its vision. Where does the familiar world lie, the world where to sleep is to be tucked in safe? How does the world lie to us? What do we have to have stolen from us, what do we have to steal, to earn that tucked-in sleep? In “The Sleeping Girl” time is the element from which morality beckons. You’d better read this story more than once. You’d better read it at least three times. Even so, you’re never getting out of it. 22 The Sleeping Girl But the Countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority, as if she were dreaming it. In her dream, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible. —Angela Carter, “The Lady of the House of Love” Those whom fortune favors Find good luck even in their sleep. —Giambattista Basile, “Sun, Moon, and Talia” he girl hadn’t moved in at least fifteen hours, but Myra attempted to organize her thoughts away from worry. She remembered that in her twenties, endless sleep had seemed appropriate. Myra had not yet seen the girl’s face. She’d been shown to the sea-grass hut late last night by a man who vanished into the brackish darkness as if he’d never been. Myra’s restless night, which marked her first week abroad, had been bounded by the steady cadence of the ocean and the clues to her roommate ’s identity: light brown hair captured in a messy ponytail and the top of a pink T-shirt, otherwise covered by a light sheet. Despite the worries that flitted opportunistically around her mind—Diabetic shock? Murder victim arranged prettily?—Myra had no trouble imagining why a traveling girl might wish to sleep the length of a horizon. On the beach the following morning, Myra didn’t swim. Though the water was the aqua of a postcard, she had heard too much about riptides and man-o-wars, floats of transparent jellyfish with electric blue tendrils. (At the hostel near the airport, a smooth-chested surfer had brandished his legs, welted with stings the size of hard-boiled eggs.) Of course, there were a zillion ways to be wounded; Myra had considered that traveling did little to affect her odds. Nonetheless, she avoided the water, instead walking the length of the white sand beach that stretched from the “eco-resort” she had chosen as home for the next few days. The resort was basic—several clusters of windowless structures, a few open grass palapas for shade, a fish ’n’ chips restaurant with long wooden tables t 23 where strangers were forced to eat together. With the exception of the sleeping girl, Myra had seen no other tourists. A vendor followed behind her along the shore, laboriously pushing his cart through the sand. Coco! Agua de Coca! Coca Cola! he chanted as he walked, though Myra was alone on the beach in the heat of the day. Out of embarrassment, she bought a coconut. She watched as its hard shell cracked under the force of the man’s machete. A second knife sliced the supple white meat inside. The vendor held up half a squeezed lime and an unmarked bottle of red sauce. Myra shrugged, preoccupied with the knife that might have been rusty, and certainly wasn’t clean. Her thoughts strayed where they would: How easy it would have been for the vendor to slice...

Genome-wide study of hair colour in UK Biobank explains most of the SNP heritability

Natural hair colour within European populations is a complex genetic trait. Previous work has established that MC1R variants are the principal genetic cause of red hair colour, but with variable penetrance. Here, we have extensively mapped the genes responsible for hair colour in the white, British ancestry, participants in UK Biobank. MC1R only explains 73% of the SNP heritability for red hair in UK Biobank, and in fact most individuals with two MC1R variants have blonde or light brown hair. We identify other genes contributing to red hair, the combined effect of which accounts for ~90% of the SNP heritability. Blonde hair is associated with over 200 genetic variants and we find a continuum from black through dark and light brown to blonde and account for 73% of the SNP heritability of blonde hair. Many of the associated genes are involved in hair growth or texture, emphasising the cellular connections between keratinocytes and melanocytes in the determination of hair colour.

Mutational Analysis of the TYR and OCA2 Genes in Four Chinese Families with Oculocutaneous Albinism.

BackgroundOculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is an autosomal recessive disorder. The most common type OCA1 and OCA2 are caused by homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations in the tyrosinase gene (TYR) and OCA2 gene, respectively.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the molecular basis of oculocutaneous albinism in four Chinese families.Patients and MethodsFour non-consanguineous OCA families were included in the study. The TYR and OCA2 genes of all individuals were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), sequenced and compared with a reference database.ResultsFour patients with a diagnosis of oculocutaneous albinism, presented with milky skin, white or light brown hair and nystagmus. Genetic analyses demonstrated that patient A was compound heterozygous for c.1037-7T.A, c.1037-10_11delTT and c.1114delG mutations in the TYR gene; patient B was heterozygous for c.593C>T and c.1426A>G mutations in the OCA2 gene, patients C and D were compound heterozygous mutations in the TYR gene (c.549_550delGT and c.896G>A, c.832C>T and c.985T>C, respectively). The heterozygous c.549_550delGT and c.1114delG alleles in the TYR gene were two novel mutations. Interestingly, heterozygous members in these pedigrees who carried c.1114delG mutations in the TYR gene or c.1426A>G mutations in the OCA2 gene presented with blond or brown hair and pale skin, but no ocular disorders when they were born; the skin of these patients accumulated pigment over time and with sun exposure.ConclusionThis study expands the mutation spectrum of oculocutaneous albinism. It is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, to report that c.549_550delGT and c.1114delG mutations in the TYR gene were associated with OCA. The two mutations (c.1114delG in the TYR gene and c.1426A>G in the OCA2 gene) may be responsible for partial clinical manifestations of OCA.

O6: Intoxications detected by hair analysis of bleached and non-bleached hair

Introduction A case report involving repeated intoxications investigated by segmented hair analysis is presented. A 41-year-old man intoxicated his 46-year-old wife several times over half a year. During this period of time the husband went away repeatedly for some days while the wife got sick. Often when he was away, she felt dizzy and nauseated and vomited. One night she was attacked by a man, who was later identified as the husband. The Police suspected the husband for several intoxication attempts on his wife. Methods Hair samples were collected from the top (5 cm long light brown hair with bleached stripes) and from the back of the head (2 cm long light brown unbleached hair) of the wife. Hair was sampled the 15-07-2013, so two of the suspected intoxication attempts (4-4 & 13-5-2013) are represented by segment 2 (1.5–4 cm). The segmented hair samples were washed, dissolved and analyzed for drugs and drugs of abuse by UPLC/TOF and quantified by UPLC/MS/MS (C. Montesano, SS. Johansen et al., JPBA 88 (2014) 295–306) Results Drug findings in head hair from the scalp and back (ng/mg) are shown in the Table. (0–1,5 cm) Scalp hair (4–5 cm) Back hair LOQ (1.5–4 cm) (0–2 cm) Caffeine 1.1 0.42 Trace 1.5 0.10 Codeine 0.009 0.031 nd 0.012 0.005 Lidocaine 0.009 0.024 0.0240 0.014 0.005 Morphine nd 0.006 nd nd 0.005 Tramadol 0.013 0.045 nd 0.015 0.010 O-desmethyltramadol Trace 0.008 nd Trace 0.005 Zolpidem 0.004 0.050 nd Trace 0.002 Diazepam nd Nd nd nd 0.002 Desmethyldiazepam 0.002 Nd nd nd 0.002 Segment 2 has highest drug concentrations of opioids and zolpidem. O-desmethyltramadol is a metabolite from tramadol, while morphine due to the low morphine:codeine ratio probably derives from codeine metabolism. After the violent attack the wife took diazepam a few times and the trace of the metabolite desmethyl-diazepam in the inner segment from scalp hair confirmed the ingestion. In general the drug levels in hair were low indicating few intake(s) and not sustained therapeutic use. The drug findings in the inner hair segment (0–1,5 cm) were com-parable with the drug levels found in the back hair, although the back hair was not bleached. Bleaching is reported to reduce the opioid content in hair from 57 to 94%, however the scalp hair was only partly bleached suggesting a lower loss and high ability to retain the drugs. Conclusion The case illustrates that hair is a valuable forensic specimen when natural processes have eliminated the drug from typical biological specimens such as blood and urine. It was possible to verify suspected intoxications by segmented hair analysis. The husband admitted the intoxications by mixing opioids and zolpidem in the wife’ coffee. He was sentenced to prison for 6 years.

Supernova

Supernova Thomas Lee (bio) Eugene could see nothing wrong with Michelle, though she insisted on suing her plastic surgeon for ruining her face. Blessed with delicate, high cheekbones and a regal nose, his potential client looked like a model for an Asian cosmetics company. “Look at the folds over my eyelids. They are uneven,” she said as she inched her face closer to his. Every young woman Eugene knew in New York’s Koreatown had little epicanthic folds surgically implanted over their eyes to make them look rounder. It was usually the first of many surgeries they had done in their teens and twenties so they could look like cover girls. He stared at Michelle’s face as closely as comfort would allow, but couldn’t see a difference between the right and left eyelids. Eugene said, “I’m sorry. They look the same to me. I can’t sue if I don’t see how you were damaged.” “They are clearly different. The left one is longer,” she said as her eyes started to tear. “That old doctor ruined me. I want to be an actress, but how can I be on TV with uneven eyelids?” Already late for lunch with his sister at a fried chicken joint on Fifth Avenue, Eugene didn’t want to waste another minute on this girl. Though the flowery scent wafting off her wavy, light-brown hair aroused him, he tried to usher her toward the exit. He often [End Page 57] spent time with young K-town ladies as attractive as Michelle, but after work, not during. He assured her, “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” “You have to take my case,” she pleaded. “I’m not the only lawyer around. Perhaps . . .” “Everyone else in K-town already turned me down,” she said apologetically. Despite only being 32 years old, Eugene started a solo practice near K-town the year before, thinking he knew enough law to thrive on his own. However, since most Koreans did not trust a lawyer as young as he was, he had only been able to land a handful of minor personal injury cases and was under a pile of debt. “He said I’d feel perfect. That I’d be a star. But I feel ugly, so he lied,” she groaned as she started to cry with babyish shrieks in the middle of his disheveled office. Recalling some fuzzy concepts from law school, Eugene thought the doctor might have broken a verbal contract with the girl, perhaps enough for the bare beginnings of a case. Eugene sighed, “I’ll look into it, okay? Let’s set up a meeting for next week.” In the sultry heat of mid-August, Eugene strode through two bustling avenue blocks to the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 32nd Street. He had grown a bit stout from eating oily K-town delivery at his desk and could feel his sweat seeping into his Brooks Brothers suit. Passing several attractive young Korean women whose faces looked surgically altered, whether with rounder eyelids, reduced jaws or pinched noses, he thought about taking Michelle’s case. If Korean girls came to him every time they felt insecure about their cosmetic surgeries, he might be able to turn his practice around and eventually become K-town’s premiere attorney, as he had always dreamed. “Nice. Leave your little sister waiting where everyone stares at her like a freak,” Claudia said when he arrived, as she dropped her cigarette on the sidewalk and entered the briskly air-conditioned restaurant. [End Page 58] To his surprise, she had shaved her head clean since he had last seen her a month ago. Since she barely covered her muscular body in a wife-beater and torn jean shorts, she was asking for stares in K-town, Eugene thought. He kept that sentiment to himself, however, not wanting to set his sister off into one of her tirades about how sexist Koreans are. “I couldn’t help it. A crazy new client,” he said. “What ambulance did you chase now?” she asked with a smirk. She had an angular face that was untouched by makeup or plastic surgery...

Hair repigmentation in melanoma

A 91-year-old woman came to our clinic with a dark nodule on the back of her scalp, which she had first noticed 4 days earlier. She had also noticed progressive repigmentation of otherwise completely white hair at the same site (figure). The repigmentation started with a few strands of reddish hair about 10 years ago. Within a few years, the colour of the repigmented hair changed again from reddish to dark black, and finally to light brown. Interestingly, the patient never had reddish, black, or light brown hair before.

Pigmentation-related phenotypes and risk of prostate cancer.

Background:Solar ultraviolet radiation exposure has been inversely related to prostate cancer incidence and mortality, possibly mediated through vitamin D status. Pigmentation-related traits influence endogenous vitamin D synthesis and may alter risk of prostate cancer.Methods:We examined prostate cancer in relation to hair and eye colour, and skin phototype in the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study cohort. Incident cancer was diagnosed in 1982 out of 20 863 men. Multivariable hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated from Cox proportional hazards models.Results:Prostate cancer risk did not differ by eye colour or skin phototype. Men with naturally red hair were significantly less likely to develop prostate cancer (HR=0.46, 95% CI 0.24–0.89) than men with light brown hair (reference).Conclusion:The red hair phenotype, which results from polymorphisms in the melanocortin-1-receptor (MC1R) gene, is associated with lower risk of prostate cancer. This pigmentation-related trait may influence prostate cancer development either directly, through genetic effects or regulatory mechanisms related to MC1R, another nearby gene, or other pigmentation genes, or indirectly, through associations with other exposures such as sunlight or vitamin D status.

An Interpretative Tour of Paris as Fashion Capital

An Interpretative Tour of Paris as Fashion Capital D. S. Mattison (bio) Agnès Rocamora's Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion, and the Media. New York: I. B. Tauris Rocamora's Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion, and the Media could equally be titled Paris: A Phenomenology of Fashion. In 187 dense, often readable pages, Rocamora shows us how and why Paris became the capital of fashion and which ways Parisian fashion is distinctly so. Her leaping-off point is an October 2004 cover of L'Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode de Paris (L'Officiel) titled ça c'est Paris. Rocamora responsibly provides a duplication of the cover (fig. 1), which features a model staring directly at the camera, her right shoulder turned forward, facing us. She has curly, long, light-brown hair; gorgeous full lips; what appears to be a blue or green eye peeking from behind a tilted tweed Chanel hat—she is wearing a matching tweed jacket, full-on Chanel style. Her face is strong and determined. The light is radiating behind her. She has olive skin from that Romano-Gallic heritage. A daughter of royalty and revolution. She is definitely seducing you. Once you meet her you must return. If you have never met her you still dream about her—her trope will never be exhausted—both in media and literature as well as in real life. Paris is known for its beautiful and intelligent women and therefore for its beautiful and intelligent fashion. This translates into a complex and complicated identity as a global phenomenon saturated with important ontological, epistemological, temporal, and metaphysical problems (as are all phenomena, of course, but some are exemplary, such as this one). In order to elucidate the phenomenon of Paris as fashioned by fashion and fashioning fashion, Rocamora's project is implicitly linguistic and hermeneutical. She inquires what lies behind or within the image, its being paired with words on the cover of Paris's L'Officiel magazine, what [End Page 326] it is representative of, the rich history enmeshed therein. She argues that ça connotes "a world of luxury goods, glamorous haunts, and fashionable lifestyles, made all the more seductive by the flow of enticing images and words that will pass by the eyes of the readers as they flick through the pages of the magazine (xiii)." And so the spectacle of the historical event that is Paris is opened up to us from the beginning as both a "material and discursive reality" (3). Rocamora invites us to come with her on this journey, which is, like all good hermeneutics should be, both an interrogation into the nature of discourse itself and a rigorously historical analysis of events in the flow of time. It can also be seen as a sort of scholarly guidebook of Paris. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. "Ça c'est Paris." L'Officiel. October 2004. © L'Officiel. Interestingly enough, Rocamora does not fully lay out her methodology until the third chapter. We get smatterings of Bourdieuian theory in the introduction and the first two chapters, but again, it is not until the third that Rocamora makes clear her scholarly intentions. She begins here with Bourdieu's interweaving of material and symbolic production—the main idea being that material things are imbued with or ontologically constitutive of a bevy of ideological, historical, and cultural meaning. For the purpose of this work, of course, Rocamora wants to focus particularly on fashion and fashion media discourse as an exemplary phenomenon. As such, the first example noted is the designer label, or the griffe, which is a [End Page 327] real material object with its own particular history capable of transubstantiating a piece of cloth into a valuable or culturally important piece of cloth. Moreover, such a methodology takes into account Bourdieu's notion of a "field" of cultural production. From here Rocamora turns to Foucault to suggest that "media discourses invest fashion—its products, practices and agents—with a variety of values whose 'truth' is as much a part of the object of discourse as the material reality it refers to" (56). A symbol is not merely a label pointing what...

Hydroxychloroquine-Induced Reversible Hypomnesis in a Patient with Reticular Erythematous Mucinosis

Dear Editor: Hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug, which is also extensively used in the treatment of dermatology and rheumatology. Its side effects, besides ocular toxicity, include gastrointestinal discomforts, such as nausea, vomiting, cramping and diarrhea1. Hydroxychloroquine can lead to hyperpigmentation on the skin, mucosa membrane, and nails; and to a white discoloration of blond, red, and light-brown hair;1 and in rare cases, it can cause hair loss1 and pruritus2. Side effects of the central nervous system include dizziness, headache, hyperexcitability, nervousness, insomnia, psychosis/depression, and reduced seizure threshold1. Although some kinds of the drugs, including anticholinergic, sedative-hypnotics, antidepressant and antianxiety, antiepileptic, analgesics, antiarrhythmic and statins, etc., have been reported with drug-induced hypomnesis, to our knowledge, no case of hydroxychloroquine-associated hypomnesis has been described before. Herein, we reported a man with reticular erythematous mucinosis (REM) who developed reversible hypomnesis after treated with hydroxychloroquine. A 40-year-old Chinese male was referred with 1 year history of cutaneous lesion on his posterior chest, showing slow and progressive growth, causing occasional pain. The lesion didn't respond to antibiotics, such as penicillins or cephalosporins, or to systemic steroids, but mild response was noted to intra-lesional prednisolone. Cutaneous examination showed a clearly delimited reticulated erythematous plaque of 12×7 cm in the left back chest, with slight infiltration of the borders. Skin biopsy and pathology study showed abundant interstitial deposits of mucin in the dermis together with moderated perivascular and perifollicular lymphocytic infiltrate. After excluding secondary diseases, REM was diagnosed. The patient was then prescribed hydroxychloroquine 0.2 g, twice daily alone, which led to an excellent result after 2 months treatment, but the patient developed a progressive hypomnesis hereafter. He also noticed that the hypomnesis was milder when he took hydroxychloroquine 0.2 g daily than 0.2 g, twice daily; and the symptom would recover after stopping the medication for about 1 week, and recurred after taking it again. He recovered completely after stopping the medication. REM, first described by Steigleder, is a rare cutaneous disease, characterized by persistent erythema in a reticular pattern and/or confluent erythematous papules and plaques, with a predilection of location on the central area of the chest or on the upper back; and rarely on the arms, face and abdominal region3-5. It predominantly afflicts middle-aged women3-5. The typical histopathology is interstitial deposits of mucin in the dermis. The pathogenesis remains unclear3,4. Antimalarial drugs are the treatment of choice for REM3-5. Hydroxychloroquine, a derivative of chloroquine, is frequently used as the first-line treatment, and it always results in rapid improvement within about a month of starting the treatment; however, recurrence is also common5. The present patient responded well to hydroxychloroquine. Unfortunately, he had hypomnesis after administrated the drug. Based on the dosage-adverse effects relationship, we considered that hydroxychloroquine is responsible for the hypomnesis, but the mechanism is unclear. Although such a condition is very rare and the present patient had finally recovered, practitioners should be aware of it as it may have a negative impact on patient's quality of life, and even lead severe problem.

First Night on Call in Emergency Psychiatry

First Night on Call in Emergency Psychiatry

Estimating the attributable fraction for melanoma: A meta‐analysis of pigmentary characteristics and freckling

Epidemiologic research has demonstrated convincingly that certain pigmentary characteristics are associated with increased relative risks of melanoma; however there has been no comprehensive review to rank these characteristics in order of their importance on a population level. We conducted a systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis to quantify the contribution of pigmentary characteristics to melanoma, estimated by the population-attributable fraction (PAF). Eligible studies were those that permitted quantitative assessment of the association between histologically confirmed melanoma and hair colour, eye colour, skin phototype and presence of freckling; we identified 66 such studies using citation databases, followed by manual review of retrieved references. We calculated summary relative risks using weighted averages of the log RR, taking into account random effects, and used these to estimate the PAF. The pooled RRs for pigmentary characteristics were: 2.64 for red/red-blond, 2.0 for blond and 1.46 for light brown hair colour (vs. dark); 1.57 for blue/blue-grey and 1.51 for green/grey/hazel eye colour (vs. dark); 2.27, 1.99 and 1.35 for skin phototypes I, II and III respectively (vs. IV); and 1.99 for presence of freckling. The highest PAFs were observed for skin phototypes 1/II (0.27), presence of freckling (0.23), and blond hair colour (0.23). For eye colour, the PAF for blue/blue-grey eye colour was higher than for green/grey/hazel eye colour (0.18 vs. 0.13). The PAF of melanoma associated with red hair colour was 0.10. These estimates of melanoma burden attributable to pigmentary characteristics provide a basis for designing prevention strategies for melanoma.