Efficacy and Safety of UVB Excimer Light in Alopecia Areata: A Prospective, Single-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial

Alopecia Areata (AA) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease causing nonscarring hair loss. Many treatment modalities have been found to be helpful in AA, however, none on them cure the disease. Excimer laser has been shown to be effective in the treatment of AA in controlled studies. The main disadvantage of the previous studies evaluating excimer laser is choosing separate patches as a control which does not account for interlesional treatment response variability. UVB excimer light has recently emerged as a new therapeutic modality in many dermatologic diseases. However, there are only a few studies that evaluated the efficacy and safety of UVB excimer light in AA. Those studies have shown that UVB excimer light is effective in the treatment of AA but none of them was conducted in a controlled fashion. There are no prospective randomized controlled trials evaluating the efficacy and safety of UVB excimer light in AA. We plan on conducting a prospective split lesion single-blinded randomized clinical trial to assess efficacy and safety of UVB excimer light in the treatment of AA. Study Objectives To evaluate the potential for UVB excimer light to induce hair regrowth within AA patches. To assess the side effect profile of UVB excimer light when used in the treatment of AA.