Congenital hemihypertrophy

PubMed, the internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed a new interesting article, entitled “Congenital hemihypertrophy with hemihypertrichosis“ (J Dermatol. 2005 Jun;32(6):478-81). Authors of the article are Akarsu S, Coskun BK, Aydin AM et al. from the Department of Pediatrics, Firat University Faculty of Medicine, Elazig, Turkey. The rare condition in which one side of the body seems to grow faster than the other is called hemihypertrophy. Congenital hypertrichosis is believed to be a genetic disorder that is inherited or occurs as a result of spontaneous mutation. The incidence of generalised congenital hypertrichosis is about one in a billion. The authors report the rare co-presence of hemihypertrophy and hemihypertrichosis, for which they could not identify an etiological cause and which is the third such case in the literature. To access the abstract, click here.