Is There More DUPA Today or Are People Just More Aware of It?

Is there an influx in people with diffuse unpatterned alopecia nowadays or is the internet just making people more aware of this sort of hair loss?

I’ve been using the internet for the past 7 years and initially information about DUPA was scarce, in fact your website was the first place I ever saw a mention of it. and now you can find hundreds of topics from all over the web talking about DUPA.

when did you personally start noticing this type of hair loss?

When we wrote about DUPA in the medical literature back in 1995 (PDF here), the diagnosis required that the physician look at the donor area with high power magnification.

With my invention of the hair densitometer with patent issued in 1994 (U.S. Patent 5,331,472 – Method and Apparatus for Measuring Hair Density July, 1994) the ability to look at the donor area was made feasible. It took quite a few years and constant physician education by myself and Dr. Bernstein to show the importance of this diagnosis. Doctors who had hair transplant failures discovered DUPA and then began to be a big fan of doing the high powered examination to avoid tackling such patients with surgical procedures.

To answer your question, education takes time and the doctors slowly began including the diagnosis in the range of possibilities in patients. As a result, more and more emphasis of this technology was brought to the public. The internet and this site also probably helped get the word out.