Some patients with coronavirus say they lose their hair in clumps. Doctors think it is a reaction to trauma.

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A worker at Starlett beauty salon in Moscow, Russia, on June 9, 2020. Valery Sharifulin / TASS / Getty Images

• A growing number of coronavirus patients, including actress Alyssa Milano, report losing their hair after recovering from infection.
• Doctors say the likely culprit is telogen effluvium, a condition that causes hair to stop growing after a traumatic event.
• In most cases, the condition should be temporary, but it may take longer for people with severe infections.
• Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.

More than two months after testing positive for the coronavirus, Peggy Goroly noticed she was losing lumps of hair in the shower.

Hair loss began around the second week of June, three-plus months after its symptoms appeared.

Goroly, a 56-year-old Long Island resident, said she still did not feel well. She has been ill since March 5, with symptoms including fatigue, concussion, palpitations, and shortness of breath. She has trouble climbing stairs or walking into the supermarket without getting winded.

The loss of her hair on top, she told Business Insider, was “quite traumatic.”

But she knew she was not the only one, thanks to a Facebook support group for COVID-19 patients. In addition, members often publish advice on their long-term symptoms.

“I went through it one day and someone had posted, ‘Does anyone lose hair?’ And people actually showed clumps of hair in their hand, “Goroly said. “That I know I’m not crazy now.”

Her 23-year-old daughter, who tested positive for coronavirus in April, also began losing hair.

That’s what actress Alyssa Milano did, who wrote on Instagram that she tested positive for coronavirus antibodies last week. Milano said her symptoms – including loss of smell and difficulty breathing – began in late March, and she too began later experience of hair loss.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not list hair loss as a symptom of COVID-19, but some physicians have noted the condition among their patients.

“It’s there in people who have had pretty hard cases that we’ve seen it,” Drs. Nate Favini, the medical director at Forward, a primary care practice that collects data on coronavirus patients around the country, told Business Insider.

Favini said patients with coronavirus can suffer from telogen effluvium, a condition that causes hair to stop growing and eventually fails about three months after a traumatic event. While the average healthy person loses about 100 hairs per day, people with telogen effluvium can lose about three times that.

“When the body is in a really stressful situation, it basically conducts energy from hair growth to more essential things,” Favini said. The stress can be physical as well as mental, he added – a high fever or depression would both qualify.

The condition usually lasts about six months, with patients losing up to half of the hair on their scalp.

© Roberto Pfeil / Picture Alliance / Getty Images
Master hairdresser Norbert Migge cuts a client’s hair at his salon in Leverkusen, Germany, on May 4, 2020. Roberto Pfeil / Picture Alliance / Getty Images

“For other causes of telogen effluvium, we usually tell people, ‘Three to six months, you’ll see improvement,'” Favini said. However, he noted that the typical guidance may not be applicable to patients with coronavirus.

“With coronavirus, there is always the caveat that we do not yet understand this very well,” he said.

Research suggests that women in their 40s and 50s are more likely than other groups to develop chronic telogen effluvium, but again, experts are unsure whether this trend will continue in cases of coronavirus.

“There are people who are really very sick with coronavirus for long periods of time. If that is the case, then it becomes harder to predict when you will have regrowth,” Favini said.

Goroly said her hair loss seems to be slowing down lately. She adapts to the change with a new hairstyle.

“Patience is the most important thing,” Favini said. “Patience and giving your body the right care so it can recover and heal.”

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published July 30, 2020.

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