Elastic tissue in scars and alopecia

A recent report suggests that elastic fibers appear in scars in a time-depe ndent fashion. This observation prompted our investigation, because we have found elastic tissue stains helpful in determining the pattern of scarring in cases of permanent alopecia. We carried out this investigation to deter mine if the Verhoeff-Van Gieson (VVG) elastic stain can reliably differenti ate scarred from non-scarred dermis and to test our hypothesis that elastic stained sections are helpful in distinguishing lichen planopilaris (LPP) f rom lupus erythematosus (LE), central progressive alopecia in black females ("follicular degeneration syndrome" and "hot comb alopecia" are other term s used to describe this condition) and classic ivory white idiopathic pseud opelade. We studied histological sections from surgical scars of known dura tion, stained with the VVG elastic stain and VVG-stained sections of scalp biopsies from patients with established lesions of permanent alopecia. In m ost cases, both vertical and transverse sections were examined. In every ca se, the WG stain clearly differentiated scar from the normal surrounding de rmis. Distinct patterns of elastic tissue allowed for correct classificatio n in most of the well-established cases of permanent alopecia studied. We d etermined that the Verhoeff-Van Gieson stain is an excellent stain to evalu ate the pattern of scarring in cases of permanent alopecia and elastic tiss ue stains may be helpful in the histological evaluation of alopecia.