From: Morgan
Date: 7/28/00
Time: 7:22:33 PM
Remote Name: 4.54.230.250
Since we may want to read this article sometime after it has been removed from the Edmonton Journal's website, I've posted it here for easy reference.
************************************************************************************** Getting to the roots of the problem
We've cloned sheep and cows, so it was inevitable, given the importance so many men place on presenting a headful of wavy locks to the world, that someone would find a way to clone hair.
Dutch dermatologist Coen Gho can reproduce hair follicle cells in a petri dish in what may be the biggest news in hair since the invention of Brylcreem.
He can produce five new follicles from one, and five from each of the new ones, and so on, until you have enough to transplant back into a balding head.
With current techniques, hair is transplanted from one part of a patient's head to the thinning part. You're not creating new hair, just moving it around.
Technically, Gho's process is not cloning. He calls it hair multiplication, but all the budding chrome domes around the world don't care how it's done as long as they can get a piece of it.
At a time when many men think it's cool to completely shave their heads, even if they still have hair, there's no shortage of others desperate to cover up the growing expanses of bare cranium any way they can.
Gho's been so inundated since word got out about his work that he won't respond to calls or do media interviews, instead promising to give periodic updates on his research. The latest bulletin indicates he's just months away from making his patented process commercially available.
Edmonton dermatologist Don Groot isn't surprised we're still obsessed with hair.
A lot of baby boomers out there believe having hair and looking younger will help them stay competitive in the bedroom and the boardroom.
"This is the generation that was never going to get old, but we're seeing more of them coming in with hair-loss problems than ever before."
He's also seeing more women who are losing their hair, often because of menopause when estrogen levels drop and the male hormone testosterone increases.
"It's devastating for women. It really affects their self-esteem."
Groot's excited about Gho's research because it will not only make hair transplants easier, but it will also help people who don't have enough of their own hair to transplant -- accident victims who lose part of their scalp, for example, and women whose hair is naturally sparser than men and much more difficult to transplant.
But even if Gho's hair multiplication never makes it to the table, transplant techniques have improved to the point where there's much less scarring and the results look more natural.
Modern micrografting is light-years ahead of earlier procedures of transplanting larger clumps which tended to look no better than a bad toupee.
And Groot says we now understand more about what causes baldness, and that will lead to more solutions and maybe even prevent it from happening in the first place.
Most men who have a shortage of hair have alopecia -- hereditary male pattern baldness -- an excess of an enzyme called 5 alpha-reductase, which changes testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The DHT in turn causes follicles to sprout shorter and finer hairs before eventually dying out. It also shortens the growth phases and lengthens the rest phases of hair follicles.
Shortening the natural rest phase is the basis of much of the new research on baldness.
And it's the basis of the high-profile product Propecia, a prescription pill, which inhibits the action of 5 alpha-reductase.
The other product we see in TV ads seemingly every five minutes is Rogaine, a drug originally created to combat high blood pressure but which was found to have an interesting side effect -- growing hair. It's sold as a cream you rub on your scalp and stimulates the follicles into growing hair.
Studies have shown that after two years of treatment, two-thirds of the men taking Propecia had improved scalp coverage, with higher hair counts and longer, thicker hair.
With Rogaine, 40 per cent of men achieved moderate to dense results and 22 per cent had minimal regrowth.
But both work better when used early in the hair-loss process, when the follicles are not yet dead. And you have to take them forever, so a hair transplant - even though it can cost thousands of dollars because it's so labour intensive - is probably more cost-effective in the long run, Groot says.
Other products, such as Tricomin, use copper nutrients to help stop hair loss and make your existing hair thicker so it looks as if you have more. They haven't been shown to grow new hair.
Some shampoos claim to help hair growth by cleaning out dirt and oil from the follicles.
Scientists at Cornell University have been able to jolt hair follicles out of their rest phases in mice using an altered form of cold virus. The mice sprouted new hairs, but more research is needed before we know if it will help hairless humans.
Another potential treatment on the horizon is donor transplanting.
Hair follicles are one of the few things the body doesn't treat as foreign and attack, like a transplanted heart. Researchers at New York's Columbia University implanted hair follicles from the arm of a male scientist into the arm of a female scientist, and she grew large, dark hairs -- totally unlike her own.
"There's no limitation to the number of new hair follicles," says Columbia researcher Dr. Peter Cserhalmi-Friedman.
"Because you don't have to remove a follicle from someplace else, it can probably be used not only on people with good hair on one part of their scalp but also on people without any hair."
Groot cautions, though, that not all hair loss is alopecia. It can also be caused by such diverse things as hormone imbalance, stress, lupus and systemic diseases.
"The most important thing is to establish a diagnosis, then we can reach into the quiver of solutions and pick the right arrows."
The Canadian Hair Research Foundation offers the following facts about hair:
- Losing hair? You're not alone. Forty per cent of Canadian men suffer from hair loss.
- Blonds have more hair. Blonds usually have 120,000 strands of hair, brunettes have 100,000 and redheads have just 80,000. On average there are 100,000 hairs on your head.
- Hair has a five-year life span. It grows for five years, "rests" for up to four months, then falls out, leaving a new hair in its place.
- Reasons for hair loss include family history of alopecia, hormone imbalance, medications, hair straightening chemicals and dyes, illness, burns and stress.
"Men are given only so many hormones. I feel sorry for those who use up most of them to grow hair. " Anonymous bald guy
(Dave Finlayson, Journal Staff Writer. The Edmonton Journal; Southam Newspapers. Saturday 10 June 2000)
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