Jun 23, 2014 01:30 AM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Doctors at Yale used an FDA-approved arthritis drug  to successfully grow a full head of hair on a 25-year-old man suffering from a rare autoimmune disease that left him without any hair on the body, the Financial Express reported.

Doctors at Yale University used tofacitinib citrat an drug designed to treat the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis, to treat the patient who suffered from alopecia universalis, an autoimmune disease that causes "hair loss over the entire body when the immune system mistakenly attacks hair follicles," Fox News reported.

There is currently no cure or long-term treatment for alopecia universalis.

"There are no good options for long-term treatment of alopecia universalis," Brett King explains, senior author of the study and an assistant professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine, said in a statement. "The best available science suggested this might work, and it has."

After eight months of treatment the patient has regrown eyebrows and eyelashes, as well as facial, armpit, and other hair, which he lacked at the time he sought help.

The patient had also been diagnosed with plaque psoriasis, a condition characterized by scaly red areas of skin. Prior to treatment, the only hair on his body was within the psoriasis plaques on his head. He was referred to Yale Dermatology for treatment of the psoriasis.

Based on the results of this treatment, King said he believes it might be possible to address both diseases simultaneously.

"The results are exactly what we hoped for," King said. "This is a huge step forward in the treatment of patients with this condition. While it's one case, we anticipated the successful treatment of this man based on our current understanding of the disease and the drug. We believe the same results will be duplicated in other patients, and we plan to try."

King said Tofacitinib appears to spur hair regrowth in a patient with alopecia universalis by turning off the immune system attack on hair follicles that is prompted by the disease, King said

Researchers added that the drug helps in some, but not all, cases of psoriasis, and was mildly effective in this patient's case, the authors said.

The findings were recently published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

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