trichophagia

n. the chronic eating of one’s own or other people’s hair (in contrast to trichophagy, the biting of one’s own hair). Often co-occurring with trichotillomania, trichophagia is a relatively rare disturbance that may result in a potentially life-threatening trichobezoar, a mass of ingested hair in the stomach that interferes with gastrointestinal peristalsis. When the trichobezoar develops a long tail that extends into the small intestine, the condition is referred to as Rapunzel syndrome.

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Psychology term of the day

January 15th 2025

Laurence–Moon–Bardet–Biedl syndrome

an autosomal recessive disorder first described in 1866 by British ophthalmologist John Zachariah Laurence (1830–1870) and his colleague, British-born U.S. ophthalmologist Robert C. Moon (1844–1914), in four siblings with progressive visual impairment, obesity, paralysis, and cognitive impairment. In 1920 and 1922, respectively, French physician George Bardet (1885–1970) and Romanian-born Austrian physician Artur Biedl (1869–1933) independently described patients sharing only some of the symptoms seen in the original siblings, plus additional symptoms that they did not exhibit (e.g., polydactyly, impaired speech, hypogonadism). The syndrome was thus divided into two related disorders, Laurence–Moon syndrome and Bardet–Biedl syndrome (BBS). However, because of overlapping phenotypes, it is thought to be one syndrome, with BBS being the term now commonly used to cover both syndromes. Also called Laurence–Moon–Biedl–Bardet syndrome.