Anonymia, or missing fingernails or toenails, can be caused by trauma, infection, or genetic disorders. Anonychia is used to describe congenital disorders, while some diseases can also cause missing nails as a symptom.
When a person is missing one or more fingernails or toenails, the condition is technically called anonymia. This can occur through simple trauma, infection, or disease that has genetic causes. There are cases of anonymia where all nails are absent, but these are rare. Anonychia, as a term, comes from two Greek words. “Onyx” means nail and “a” means without.
Generally, medical professionals use the term anonychia for congenital disorders, which occur when a baby develops abnormally. The term may not be needed to describe a nail that a patient has torn out in an accident. In addition to traumatic injuries, some fungal infections can disturb the environment under the nail to such an extent that the nail falls off.
A child with a congenital disorder may carry one faulty gene that is usually involved in nail development, or he may carry two faulty genes. When a defective gene causes nails to be absent, then the gene is dominant, as the healthy copy of the gene does not control the effects of the defective one. Two faulty genes that would not produce problems if present as a single copy cause a recessive disease.
There are several diseases that can include missing nails as a symptom. An example is the door, or deafness syndrome, onychodystrophy, osteodystrophy and mental retardation. This syndrome, in which all four conditions are present, is extremely rare and produces many different symptoms. This can include a complete absence of fingernails or toenails. Some people with this condition have fingernails, but they are underdeveloped compared to normal fingernails.
Another condition known as Iso-Kikuchi syndrome can also affect the nails of sufferers of the disease. In this case, a patient typically has underdeveloped or missing fingernails on their index fingers. The thumb and middle finger nails can also be affected.
Ellis-van Creveld syndrome is another genetic disorder that can cause fingernails or toenails to be missing. This particular syndrome primarily affects the bones of the body, which in turn affects nail growth. Nail-patella syndrome is another inherited bone condition that can cause the patella to lack bones and nails. Some other conditions that exhibit nail loss, such as epidermolysis bullosa, in which a patient’s primary symptom is blistering, brittle skin, primarily cause nail loss through peeling of the skin.
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