This article is about new treatments, and information regarding hair loss. Androgenetic alopecia is a disease in which the hormone DHT causes hair follicles to become smaller, and eventually go away for good. Since discovering DHT in the early 1990s, scientists have focused on studying it’s affects on hair follicles. DHT research has caused advances in both drug treatments, and hair follicle transplant treatments. The drug Finasteride is effective in men but not safe for women. A drug called bimatoprost shows promise as a safe treatment for women, and is in development. Hair follicle transplant treatment is showing new promise by growing new hair follicles resistant to hair loss, then transplanting them to the patient. This is a breakthrough because before hair follicles were simply rearranged on a patients scalp.
Key Points:
- 1Androgenetic alopecia is a hereditary disease where a hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT) acts on genetically-susceptible scalp hair follicles
- 2Since the early 1990’s, researchers have been able to study isolated hair follicles using cell culture techniques
- 3Neogenesis of Hair Follicle Promises More Widely Available Hair Transplants
Being able to induce new human hair growth from cloned human papillae could significantly expand the use of hair transplantation to women with hair loss, who tend to have insufficient donor hair, as well as to men in early stages of baldness.
Reply