Researchers say that a study that they recently completed shows that hair loss may appear in patients who have recently undergone vaccinations. The hair loss side effect is extremely rare and would need to be checked by other research tests that are currently underway. The rarity of hair loss happening due to the vaccines is underlined by the fact that from 1983 to1995 only sixty cases of hair loss were checked and noted from vaccine receiving patients. It is estimated that millions and millions of vaccines have been handed out in these years to the general population.

The research is not able to prove that the vaccines alone caused the hair loss in question as there could be other reasons for the hair loss that were not apparent at the time. The research was able to be conducted due to VAERS or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. With the VAERS programme anyone can submit data about adverse reactions to vaccines.

Though all vaccines were invesigated it appears that the biggest number of hair loss casulties were with the hepatitis B vaccine. In fact out of the 60 patients who got vaccines and hair loss, 46 had received the hepatitis B vaccine. Some patients reported hair loss again on receiving more doses of same vaccine. The study also noted that females were more likely to report hair loss than males, however the researchers felt that there could be other reasons for this. In over 50% of the hair loss cases the hair grew back, but other cases had only partial and no hair regrowth reported.

Hair loss may be the result of high fever, hormone differences, being pregnant, shock caused by surgery and translants, bad diet, anemia, ageing, male pattern balding, thyroid problems, acute emotional stress, and autoimmune diseases.

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention along with the FDA is always looking into possible conflicts in vaccines that may cause hair loss and are aware of all recent research and findings which are fed into powerful computers to evaluate statistics. There is also the Vaccine Safety Datalink or VSD which formed by the CDC to look at vaccine health and safety concerns. About six 6 million people are on the records of the VSD project in America.