Background: Topical immunotherapy of alopecia areata (AA) is an effective but time-consuming treatment with unknown long-term risks.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify criteria which allow a selection of patients with a good prognosis for topical immunotherapy with diphencyprone.
Methods: The anamnestic and clinical data of 50 successfully and 55 unsuccessfully treated patients were compared by the Mann-Whitney test.
Results: Five factors were found to be of prognostic significance: type of AA (p < or = 0.001), presence of nail changes (p < or = 0.001), duration of AA before treatment (p < or = 0.005), age at onset (p < or = 0.01) and association with atopic eczema (p < or = 0.02).
Conclusion: A selection of AA patients who are likely to respond to topical immunotherapy is possible on the basis of anamnestic and clinical data.