KZN professor Ncoza Dlova makes ‘biggest breakthrough’ in hair loss among African women

The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Dean of Clinical Medicine, Professor Ncoza Dlova is earning worldwide praise after she helped discover a new gene that is a major cause of permanent hair loss amongst women of African descent.

Dlova, an  internationally renowned dermatologist collaborated with scientists in the US to discover the  root cause of Central Centrifugal Cicatricial Alopecia (CCCA), one of the most common causes of scarring alopecia amongst African women. 
This ground-breaking study, titled: ‘Variant PAD13 in Central Centrifugal Cicatricial Alopecia’ was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the highest impact journals in medical science.

According to UKZN, patients with CCCA were recruited from Durban, South Africa, from 2013 through 2016 and in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, from 2014 through 2017. 

CCCA is defined as hair loss or spot balding that starts from the central (crown) part of the scalp and radiates outward in a circular pattern. CCCA