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About 30% of all full-term babies are born with some lanugo. If your baby is born premature (before 37 weeks), they have a greater chance of having lanugo. It may take several weeks to go away, but lanugo will fall off on its own. Both conditions can trigger a nutritional deficiency and result in insufficient body fat. Lanugo grows as a physiological or natural response to insulate the body.
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When is growing lanugo a sign of a medical condition?
Most fetuses develop lanugo around the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy and it has many important purposes for babies in the womb. However, the hair is usually not present by the time of birth. It often sheds around the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, although it can linger and shed weeks after birth. If you’ve ever held a newborn baby, you may have noticed a layer of soft, downy hair over their body. This hair, known as lanugo, usually goes away within a couple of weeks. But lanugo can also show up in adults, especially those with eating disorders.
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In disease states such as malnutrition and anorexia nervosa, where thermoregulation becomes disrupted, lanugo grows to help insulate the body. This growth is a natural response to an unnatural insult. Lanugo hair is important as it helps to hold the vernix caseosa, a protective layer, on a baby’s skin.
What is lanugo and what causes this hair to grow?
Most fetuses develop lanugo around the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. But the hair is usually not present by the time of birth. Lanugo is the hair that covers the body of some newborns. This downy, unpigmented hair is the first type of hair that grows from hair follicles. It can be found everywhere on a baby’s body, except on the palms, lips, and soles of the feet. However, people with eating disorders or certain tumors or cancers can grow lanugo.
Babies typically shed lanugo before birth; however, some babies don’t shed it for several weeks after birth. Lanugo on a baby’s skin isn’t a cause for concern, but if you have questions, don’t be afraid to speak with your doctor. The presence of lanugo on adult skin often points to an eating disorder and shouldn’t be ignored.
Lanugo is more prone to occur in infants delivered preterm (before 37 weeks). A few weeks may pass, and lanugo will finally shed on its own. When this happens, the lanugo is soon shed within a few weeks. Lanugo is replaced by another type of hair called vellus hair, which is thinner than the former. Lanugo hairs send vibrations through the vernix every time your baby moves.
But these aren’t the only types of hair common to humans. Young people with hypertrichosis and their families can benefit from medical, social, and mental health resources. People with severe hypertrichosis may find it difficult, overwhelming, expensive, and painful to have abnormal hair growth routinely plucked, shaved, bleached, or waxed. Even for people who do not have abnormal hair growth, these measures are only temporary. If the abnormal hair growth is severe and begins in childhood, a diagnosis of congenital hypertrichosis is fairly simple.
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The hair just inside your ear works with earwax to keep dirt and debris away from your eardrum. Lanugo doesn’t bother your baby, but trying to remove it probably will. A running water environment offers numerous microhabitats for many types of animals. Eating disorders and malignancies have also been found to cause lanugo.
What happens to a baby’s lanugo hair?
You might be able to see and feel lanugo on your baby’s back, shoulders, arms, forehead, and cheeks. It can occur in just a few spots or coat most of the body. As lanugo is not a health condition itself, it does not require treatment directly. Adult lanugo will naturally disappear when the condition triggering it, such as anorexia, is effectively treated.
If there is also a family history of similar symptoms, this can also help suggest the diagnosis. Some babies are born with a full head of hair, only to go bald within the first few months of life. Lanugo plays a vital role in binding the vernix to the skin; this protects the fetus from damaging substances found in amniotic fluid.
The sight of a baby covered in hair can be distressing, but it is perfectly normal. Not all babies are born with lanugo, but all of them were coated with it in the womb. The hair usually goes away before birth, but sometimes it sticks around until a baby is born or even for a few months after.
Your family’s genetics will also play a role, making the hair lighter or darker. In this article, we examine the role of lanugo and why it might grow on adults. A person can either be born with the condition or acquire it later in life. Babies have an increased risk of being born with spina bifida if the mother ran a high fever during her pregnancy or took the drug valproic acid for epilepsy (4).
Lanugo and vellus hairs are similar in appearance, and it can be easy to confuse them. One theory is that the appearance of lanugo hairs on an adult is a result of the body trying to insulate itself and preserve heat. Scientists think this because lanugo often appears alongside conditions that reduce the body’s ability to control its own temperature, such as anorexia nervosa. Lanugo helps vernix (the waxy, cheese-like substance that covers the fetus) stick to the skin. Vernix helps protect a fetus’s body from amniotic fluid inside the uterus. Amniotic fluid could damage their delicate skin without lanugo and vernix.
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