Lately things are going badly. If a few days ago we met Junior, the nine-week-old baby with an abundant amount of hair, now Protagnosta is Millianna, an 18-month-old girl from Ridgeland, South Carolina, who He was born with a white tuft on his forehead, the same as his mother and grandmother, a feature shared by three generations and is due to a condition called poliosis.
Genetics is sometimes very curious. There are physical characteristics that are too characteristic of people who remain generation after generation in family inheritance. The typical of "you have your grandmother's nose", or "your great grandfather's ears", but Millianna's is clearly one of those cases that surprise by its peculiarity.
What is poliosis?
It is not a disease, it can occur in perfectly healthy people. Poliosis (comes from the Greek word "pilios", which means gray). It is a condition characterized by a localized area of patchy white hair, which although it occurs more frequently on the forehead, it can also appear on the eyebrows, eyelashes or any other hairy area of the body. In addition, it can occur at any time in life, even in young children.
The white tone is due to the lack of pigmentation in the hair and skin of that area. The hair follicles have a melanocyte deficiency, responsible for giving hair color. The lack of this substance causes the hair to grow white, the same as with gray hair, although this is a condition due to the passage of time.
Poliosis can be genetic, as in this case. It can be present from birth due to a mutation of the KIT gene that causes a total absence of melanocytes in the skin in patched areas, so that we not only find the typical white tuft, but also depigmentation of the surrounding skin. It can also be acquired, caused by diseases or hair infections.
Actor Johnny Depp has a lock of white hair in the movie Sweeney Todd, as does Frankenstein's girlfriend.
Grandmother, mother and daughter
"What is inherited is not stolen," says a popular popular saying. And in this case it is given together. Both the grandmother and the mother of the girl wear the same white strand on the forehead, a physical feature that due to its notoriety can affect the self-esteem of people, but in this family is an exception.
The three were always determined to make their rarity a virtue, and although the mother herself confesses to having gone through difficult periods, Brianna Worthy, 23, says she plans to educate her daughter letting you know that it is "special and beautiful".
