Piedra Branca and Piedra negra in hair infection: Evidence Synthesis

Abstract

Superficial mycosis are fungal infections of the skin and its
adnexal structures that invade only the stratum corneum and the
most superficial layers, causing minimal or no inflammatory
reaction. The most frequent are tineas or dermatophytosis, tinea
versicolor and tinea nigra, and piedras (white and black). This
work aimed to carry out a literature review focusing on the works
that discussed Piedra Branca and Piedra negra in capillary
infection. The selection of papers used the free software Publish or
Perish, which selected the most cited works in national and
international literature, using the following strategy:
"Trichosporon sp." And "Piedraia hortae" And treatment is (scalp
or hair). The titles search was carried out on August 20, 2021.
After reading the titles and abstracts, the remaining 15 papers
were downloaded, read and presented in chronological order. In
conclusion, there are morphological differences between white
and black piedras, however, white piedras can be confused with
black because of their color sometimes more light brown or
brownish. Therefore, it is always necessary to perform mycological
analysis to correctly determine the type of fungus.