Hairy Elbows

Description

Hairy elbows is a rare form of localized hypertrichosis. The lanugo type of hair usually appears in infancy, becomes coarser during early childhood, and regresses at adolescence (summary by Visser et al., 2002).

Clinical Features

The 2 Amish sibs first reported by Beighton (1970) were thought to be heterozygous for the Weill-Marchesani syndrome. Both were short of stature and had long coarse hair involving the lower third of the upper arm and the upper third of the forearm bilaterally.

MacDermot et al. (1989) described a 12.5-year-old boy with hairy elbows and short stature who had a normal skeletal survey and no family history of hypertrichosis.

Sporadic cases were reported by Rudolph (1985), Andreev and Stransky (1979), and Warner (1980).

In a review of the literature, Visser et al. (2002) found reports of 26 cases of hypertrichosis cubiti since the first report of Beighton (1970). In approximately three-quarters of the cases, hypertrichosis cubiti was isolated or associated with short stature only, whereas the remaining cases involved short stature as well as other features such as facial dysmorphism, limb anomalies, and psychomotor retardation or speech delay (see Wiedemann-Steiner syndrome, 605130).

Inheritance

Di Lernia et al. (1996) described affected father and son, suggesting autosomal dominant inheritance.