Red Hair of Pathological Origin
Most red hair is caused by the MC1R gene and is non-pathological. However, in rare cases red hair can be associated with disease or genetic disorder:
- In cases of severe malnutrition, normally dark human hair may turn red or blonde. The condition, part of a syndrome known as kwashiorkor, is a sign of critical starvation caused chiefly by protein deficiency, and is common during periods of famine.
- One variety of albinism (Type 3, aka rufous albinism), sometimes seen in Africans and inhabitants of New Guinea, results in red hair and red-colored skin.
- Red hair is found on people lacking pro-opiomelanocortin.
Read more about this topic: Red Hair
Famous quotes containing the words red, hair, pathological and/or origin:
“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 1:18.
“Her face is like the moon.
Her mouth tastes like the drink of life.
Her wild, hot kiss
with a pull of her hair ...
what’s THAT like?”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or another.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)