Alopecia areata may or may not cause you to experience complete baldness. The size of your bald spots and the length of time in which they get larger depends totally on the stage of your disease, as well as how often your immune system collapses.
Some men and women, regardless of the intensity level of their auto immune disease, may lose their entire head of hair in the very beginning stages. At the same time, others who are going through the same level of disease may only begin to show a few thinning bald spots. There is a technical name for when people lose all of their hair right away and is called “alopecia totalis”.