MEDICINE : Drug Aids Hair-Pulling Affliction

Clomipramine, a new drug to treat depression, provides short-term relief for millions of women who are victims of a bizarre condition marked by an irresistible impulse to pull out one’s own hair, scientists said today in a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The condition, trichotillomania, may afflict as many as 2 million to 4 million American women, said study leader Susan Swedo, a researcher at the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institutes of Study.

Swedo said that 95% of its victims are women, who typically are “very secretive because of the embarrassing nature and craziness of their symptoms.”

Victims normally pull out the hair on their head, or their eyebrows and eyelashes, and in some cases they pluck out their pubic hair. Some pull out one strand at a time and may eat the strand. The urge to pull varies and can last for up to four hours. The activity takes place while the woman is alone.