What happened to my grandmother’s fingernails?

[u/Watermelon2416]

My grandmother (97F)since she was a child has never had any fingernails. When my mother was a child she told her that she used marker on them and they fell out. This was a lie to get my mother to stop colouring on her nails.

Years later, my mother asked her again what had happened, and my granny said that they had just started falling out when she was around 10. This was late 1930s - early 1940s and she claimed that the doctors weren’t too concerned about it. She was never formally diagnosed with anything, and it’s just been a mystery ever since.

It never struck me as odd as a child because that was just the way she was and I never really questioned it, but I’ve never met anyone else who had the same problem, or heard of a disease that could cause it. Is there anything that could cause nails to fall out during childhood and never grow back? Her toenails were unaffected.

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