An instant 'cure' for baldness... if you don't mind being injected with pigs' bladders

An instant 'cure' for baldness... if you don't mind being injected with pigs' bladders

By Daily Mail Reporter
UPDATED:12:00 GMT, 10 May 2011
Source: dailymail.co.uk

It is a condition that brings despair to millions of men.

But now there is a potential cure for those suffering from hair loss - which takes its cue from the farmyard.

Male pattern baldness could be stopped in its tracks or even reversed by the treatment, which involves patients being injected with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) taken from their own blood.

And the injections will also contain ACell - a powder extracted from pigs' bladders.


Cure? Male pattern baldness affects millions
 of men including comedian Harry Hill
 and Foreign Secretary William Hague

Foreign Secretary William Hague

This week, 20 British men will be given the 30-minute treatment, the Daily Express reported.

Dr Raghu Reddy, a Harley Street clinician at the The Private Clinic, will perform the treatment with the help of Dr Gary Hitzig, who developed it in the U.S.

Dr Reddy said: 'It is as close as we have come to a cure for male baldness.

'This revolutionary injectable combination of ACell and PRP may be the answer to restoring hair growth for those in the early to moderate stages of hair loss.

'Similar to how a flu shot can prevent one from catching the flu, ACell and PRP injections can help prevent further hair loss and help restore one’s hair.

'I appreciate the interest and support from the British Medical Board, who in conjunction with my supervision, are making this treatment available to people in the UK.'

The treatment involves the formation of a protective barrier which protects remaining healthy hair-growing cells.


Help at hand: The injections could lead to a cure for baldness

It then goes on to duplicate the surrounding tissue, allowing healthy hair-growing cells to return.

Male pattern baldness, suffered by comedian Harry Hill and Foreign Secretary William Hague, is prevalent in half of men aged over 50.

It is caused by a mixture of genetics and hormones and while there are a number of treatments available, there is no cure... yet.

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Baldness cure which reverses genetics could start clinical trials in two years

Baldness cure which reverses genetics could start clinical trials in two years

• Protein which stops hair follicles maturing found by scientists
• The team behind the discovery is in talks with drugs companies which may put a cure on the market in two years

By Sara Malm

PUBLISHED:11:48 GMT, 19 August 2012| UPDATED:16:09 GMT, 5 September 2012
Source: dailymail.co.uk

A cure for baldness may be available on the market sooner than previously thought after a breakthrough in negotiations between scientists and drugs companies.

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania believe they have discovered the reason for baldness, an enzyme which shuts down hair follicles.

Dr George Cotsarelis announced this week that he is in talks with several pharmaceutical companies about developing treatments and hopes to start clinical trials as early as in two years time.

Cure: The discovery this year could revolutionise treatment for baldness

Drugs that block the protein are already available on the marked as they are used to treat asthma and allergies.

Dr Cotsarelis and his dermatological team at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered that enzyme Prostaglandin D2 (PGD2) prevented hair follicles from maturing.

The link between genetics and baldness have long been common knowledge but not the cause.

But when the team analysed the scalps of balding men, they found levels of PDG2 to be three times higher in areas in which the hair was thinning.

Earlier work by the same team found bald men have cells capable of making hair; they have just failed to mature.

It is thought that PGD2 prevents the cells maturing - and stopping it from working would allow hair to grow again.

In tests on lab and on mice, the compound stunted hair growth, the journal Science Translational Medicine reported in March.

‘Blockers’ of the enzyme have been formulated as pills to cure asthma and allergic conditions but it should be possible to turn them into a lotion which could be applied to the scalp.


Hair we go: At the moment men
 have very few options for treating baldness

Dr Cotsarelis, said: ‘The nice thing about dermatology and hair loss in general is that you can take compounds that maybe are being used as a pill and put them in a topical formulation.

‘We certainly think it would be good at preventing hair loss but we don’t know for sure that it would regrow.’

Lab test suggest the treatment may also help women who are losing their hair.

Female hair loss carries an even greater stigma than the male condition, but is not as uncommon as many people may believe.

About 40 per cent of women suffer from some form of hair loss as a result of hormone changes during menopause.

For men this number is significantly higher according to Dr Cotsarelis.

By the age of 50 nearly half of all men have some degree of male pattern baldness, a number which rockets to 70 per cent by the age of 70.

Dr Cotsarelis said: ‘We think these findings will have implications beyond male pattern baldness but, even if they don’t, we think it will be exciting.

‘There is a large number of people who would rather have hair than not.’ If developed the drug would revolutionise the hair regrowth market.

Britain’s 7.4million bald and balding men have limited options of cures for their conditions.

Hair transplants are painful and expensive and success is variable.

The only two drugs available have high-risk side effects.

Testosterone blocker Propecia may cause impotence and a second drug, Amexidil, which increase blood flow to the hair follicles could in fact accelerate hair loss.

Other treatments in development elsewhere include a jab that uses fat cells from the tummy to pep up hair growth on the scalp.

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Japan study raises hopes of cure for baldness

Japan study raises hopes of cure for baldness

By AFP
Posted Wednesday, April 18 2012 at 12:36

Source: nation.co.ke

 

Japanese researchers have successfully grown hair on hairless mice by implanting follicles created from stem cells, they announced Wednesday, sparking new hopes of a cure for baldness.

 

Led by professor Takashi Tsuji from Tokyo University of Science, the team bioengineered hair follicles and transplanted them into the skin of hairless mice.

 

The creatures eventually grew hair, which continued regenerating in normal growth cycles after old hairs fell out.

 

When stem cells are grown into tissues or organs, they usually need to be extracted from embryos, but Tsuji and his researchers found hair follicles can be grown with adult stem cells, the study said.

 

"Our current study thus demonstrates the potential for not only hair regeneration therapy but also the realisation of bioengineered organ replacement using adult somatic stem cells," it said.

 

The combination of the new and existing technologies is expected to improve treatment for baldness, possibly allowing people to use their own cells for implants that will give them their hair back.

 

"We would like to start clinical research within three to five years, so that an actual treatment to general patients can start within a decade," said researcher Koh-ei Toyoshima.

 

The study is published in the online science magazine Nature Communications.

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Men And Balding: Why We May Be The Last Men To Go Bald

Men And Balding

Why We May Be The Last Men To Go Bald

By Jeremy Berger
Source: uk.askmen.com

Jeremy Berger is a writer living in New York.

"There has never been a clinical treatment specifically developed for hair loss that worked."

Balding is the hoverboard of medical research. If someone had told me in 1989 that, more than 20 years later, my Birdhouse deck wouldn't float, I'd have told the butthead to get lost. But here we are in 2012. Hoverboardless. Dinosaurs.

Worse: Men have been losing their hair for thousands of years, and the best science has done is smoke and mirrors, ointment and wigs. Perhaps it's what we deserve for all our vanity, preening and grooming while the promises of liberal democracy smolder. Maybe we should shave our heads and rebuild America. But the truth is even the most stoic guys struggle with hair loss when it sets in, and it'll happen to about 50% of us by middle age. Only a much smaller percentage -- as low as 7% -- will ever seek medical treatment.

Understanding why this is boils down to the fact that there hasn't been a single groundbreaking treatment that permanently stopped or turned back the clock on hair loss. In fact, there has never been a clinical treatment specifically developed for hair loss that worked.

The options from recent history: wearing a wig; using a topical solution or foam with minoxidil, like Rogaine (developed initially to treat high blood pressure); taking finasteride, which is in Propecia and Proscar (first used to treat an enlarged prostate); or getting hair transplants. Each of these works in a piecemeal way, but they're all problematic. Wigs are a bit silly. Rogaine and Propecia have mixed results and must be used every day, for life. Transplants are limited by the amount of donor hair from the crown and back of the neck. None of them will bring back the flowing locks of your teenage years.

Some scientists and doctors think that could change in the next 10 years. Is it for real this time?

The best defense is a good offense

In recent years the theme of the balding conversation has changed from “maintenance” and “prevention” to actual regrowth. The reason? A better understanding of hair biology, including new knowledge of how cells communicate with the hair follicle. A study led by George Cotsarelis, M.D., chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, that was published last year in the Journal of Clinical Investigation found that a bald scalp and one with hair both have the same number of stem cells, but in the bald scalp, the stems cells are sort of chilling out, just sitting there instead of going to work repairing and replenishing hair follicles and fibers. “However, the fact that there are normal numbers of stem cells in a bald scalp gives us hope for reactivating those stem cells,” Cotsarelis said in a news release issued by Penn Medicine. Get the stem cells working again and the hair comes back.

New Biotech: Follica, Histogen, Replicel

Cotsarelis declined to be interviewed for this story, but he's been hard at work as co-founder and member of the scientific advisory board of Follica, a privately held biotech company that has an exclusive license from Penn Medicine to develop technology based on the JCI study and another from 2007, which showed that mice with skin wounds regrew hair at the injured site in a process that mimicked embryonic development. This means that activated stem cells can grow new hair follicles. Little else is known of Follica's forthcoming balding treatment, except that it will likely include a drug compound and some sort of wounding of the skin akin to what went down with the mice.

Follica isn't the only biotech company trying to find a cure for hair loss and stake a claim in the multibillion dollar market for treatment, one that could conceivably balloon if a better treatment existed. San Diego-based Histogen, a privately held company headed by Gail Naughton, Ph.D., an expert in tissue engineering, also views Dr. Cotsarelis' work (along with studies at Rockefeller University by Elaine Fuchs and University of Southern California by Cheng-Ming Chuong) as the foundation of current biotech progress in hair restoration.

“Our approach is to take cells that are normally found in the scalp and grow them under embryonic conditions of very low oxygen and suspension culture to trick the cells into thinking they're back in the embryonic environment,” Naughton said.

“Within a couple of days they start acting like multipotent stems cells and secreting the growth factors that are necessary to stimulate stem cells in the body, including stem cells of the human hair follicle. We've basically learned how to manufacture a complex physiological group of growth factors that are normally responsible for stimulating stem cells to create new hairs. We simply mimic nature by figuring out how to make what the body makes to grow a new hair.”

Those growth factors, chemical signals produced by cells that induce more cell growth and maturation or differentiation, are what go into Histogen's Hair Stimulating Complex (HSC), an injectible liquid formula currently in clinical trials in Manila, Philippines.

Naughton believes she and her team have identified the four growth factors that are most important for the cycling of a hair follicle and for stimulating growth: Follistatin, Noggin (seriously), Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and Keratinocyte growth factor (KGF). So far, according to Histogen, patients have had statistically significant hair growth (including increases in hair count, hair thickness and hair density) at 12 weeks and at one year. Histogen aims to have a product on the market in Asia in 2015 and in the U.S. a year later. The actual procedure involves a one- or two-time set of injections in the scalp with a very fine 32-gauge needle, taking only several minutes rather than the hours required for a hair transplant.

"What we know for sure about the future is that there will be more robots."

Vancouver-based RepliCel is also working on an injectible treatment. Scientists there are banking on the dermal sheath cup cell, which they isolate from the root of the patient's hair follicle. That cell goes into a growth medium where it multiplies into the millions before being injected back into the patient's scalp and going to work growing new follicles and rejuvenating existing ones. “We believe that the dermal sheath cup cells are the progenitor cells that are necessary to instruct the rest of the cell population to form a follicle and to form a hair fiber,” David Hall, RepliCel CEO, said. “In layman's terms, we're doing a cellular transplant as opposed to a follicular transplant.”

RepliCel's phase one clinical trial is underway in Tbilisi, Georgia, and the company expects to have safety and efficacy data in early 2012. (Phase one of clinical trials primarily establishes the safety of the procedure. Phase 2 focuses on dosing and efficacy in a larger group of patients.) That means that a treatment in the U.S. would probably be available in the next five years.

Meanwhile, in New York...

In the meantime, hair transplant surgery has come a long way from obvious “plugs” -- large, clunky grafts -- to more precise implants in naturally occurring groups of 1-4 hairs called follicular units. Even RepliCel's Hall considers microtransplant surgery the gold standard for care in men. “In the hands of a gifted surgeon, it has a really good outcome,” he said. “The problem is that there are only so many gifted surgeons.”

The logic behind hair transplant surgery, aside from the obvious -- moving hair from once place to another -- is that the donor hair taken from the back of the head isn't sensitive to the androgen, or hormone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT is the culprit in male-patterned baldness that stops the follicle from cycling normally. (To the extent that Propecia works, it does so by blocking DHT.) In theory, a successful hair transplant should be relatively permanent. The other problem is that there are only so many hairs.

In the U.S. there are two new developments that could potentially improve the quality and availability of hair transplant surgery, which according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons was the fifth most common cosmetic surgical procedure among men in 2010, behind nose reshaping, eyelid surgery, liposuction, and breast reduction.

One of these developments is being tested at the offices of Amiya Prasad, M.D., a cosmetic surgeon in New York City. Gary Hitzig, M.D., Medical Director of Prasad Cosmetic Surgery Hair Restoration Division, is banking on the same university studies cited by the biotech companies we interviewed. But instead of coming up with a proprietary injection -- like Histogen's HSC or RepliCel's dermal sheath cup cells -- he has sidestepped the research and FDA approval process by using ACell MatriStem, a product derived from pig bladder that has already been cleared by the FDA and is commonly used in regenerative medicine (including by Prasad in the other areas of his practice).

ACell MatriStem has been in the mainstream press for regenerating a woman's severed fingertip, healing a toddler's severed thumb and for its use in healing soldiers with significant battle wounds. It's made of collagen and other growth factors; when applied to wounds, it provides a sort of scaffolding for healing and simultaneously activates nearby adult stem cells to rebuild tissue.

Hitzig has experimented with several applications of ACell: Using it to accelerate the healing process and prevent scarring where donor hair was extracted, dipping hairs in it before they were transplanted into the top of the scalp, as an injection in non-transplant patients, and as an injection combined with platelet-rich plasma (PRP), blood plasma jacked up with even more growth factors than the ACell alone.

“It's amazing stuff,” he said. “We're at the stage now where I can take people who weren't candidates for transplants and we can go ahead and do them. We have a way of healing the area instead of scarring. And we have a way of getting a better result by multiplication of hairs growing on top.” He's especially excited about the injection, which he sees and as a way to slow down or stop hair loss.

“I equate it to a flu shot,” Hitzig said. “It may not stop you from getting the flu, but it sure as heck helps. We haven't had anything else like this.”

It's not a radically different concept than what the biotech companies are exploring: Create a nutrient- and growth-factor-rich environment to save dying hair follicles and grow new ones. The one problem is that Hitzig hasn't yet conducted a controlled clinical trial to prove that patients have statistically significant results with the ACell and PRP injection.

Thus, robots

The other development, naturally, is a robot. It turns out that extracting an implanting follicular units successfully is difficult and time-consuming, a procedure too tricky for many transplant surgeons. Restoration Robotics, a privately held medical device company, aims to democratize the procedure. Its first product, ARTAS, uses an image-guided robotic arm to harvest hair from the back of the patient's head.

Mohan Bodduluri, Ph.D, the founder and CTO of Restoration Robotics, said that he expects to roll out a product that can do even more in five years. “Internally, we call that 'hair transplantation in a box," Bodduluri said. “The expectation is that the follicles would be harvested, they would be stored and be implanted -- all by the machine. The technicians may never have to handle the graft.”

ARTAS is currently being used at hair transplant facilities in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Denver. It looks a bit like a cross between a massage chair and Optimus Prime. Like most hair transplants, the cost of a procedure with ARTAS costs $10,000 and up, depending on the number of grafts and the reputation of the surgeon.

The future: Hairy

What we know for sure about the future is that there will be more robots. What we sort of know is that there will be a brief period of time when people in Asia and the Caucuses are walking around with pompadours while we're still in recession (both kinds). And what we can only speculate about is that Chinese President Hu Jintao and Vice-President, Xi Jinping did not get such exceptional hair through genetics alone. Somebody got his hands in the cell transplant injection jar.

Prasad said something interesting when I spoke to him about hair transplants and his work with Hitzig: “Hair transplant surgeons, kind of like chefs who cook chili, talk about how the other guys are not as good as I am because I do this that and the other thing. When you get down to it, no matter what doctor is doing the work, the quality of the transplant has an upper limit. It's a strategy to frame your face, create the illusion of more hair than you think someone has.”

He's confident that ACell will be a breakthrough, but his comments have broader implications: chili cooks are a pain in the ass. Also, framing the face is about more than just about the number of follicles in a scalp. It's about how we see ourselves and whether we really can, and want to, reverse-engineer the building blocks of nature for cosmetic purposes. Whether it's better to live generally within the bounds of nature or to live with an illusion of youth.

Common procedures are becoming less invasive and less costly. Botox was the most popular minimally invasive cosmetic procedure for men in 2010, up 10% over the previous year. There's a very good chance that we're less than 10 years away from a similarly quick and painless injectible treatment to stop or reverse hair loss.

When it happens, when we decide to use it, make no mistake: The treatment may go under the radar, but everything we do frames the face.

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Scientists discover 'werewolf' gene which could spell the end for baldness

Scientists discover 'werewolf' gene which could spell the end for baldness

By Daily Mail Reporter

UPDATED:07:08 GMT, 6 June 2011

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Actor Michael J. Fox,
 in the movie Teen Wolf

A 'werewolf' gene which causes hair to grow all over the body has been found by scientists, who say the discovery could lead to a remedy for baldness.

They have tracked down a genetic fault which is behind a rare condition called hyper- trichosis, or werewolf syndrome, where thick hair covers the face and upper body.

They say they may be able to use drugs to trigger a similar gene mutation in people to encourage hair to grow on bald patches.

Breakthrough: Scientists have identified a genetic fault called hyper-trichosis which could, in time, spell the end for baldness

But the scientists stressed that tackling baldness was still many years away.
 
They do not yet know how they would be able to trigger hair to grow in bald patches without causing excessive growth all over the body.

Werewolf syndrome is extremely rare, with only 50 recorded cases in the past 300 years.

One is Supatra Sasuphan, an 11-year-old girl from Thailand who was named as the world's hairiest child in the Guinness World Records in March.

Men with the condition have hair all over their face, including eyelids, and upper bodies.

Women tend to just have hair in patches although Supatra has it covering much of her face.

Example: Thai schoolgirl Supatra Sasuphan suffers from the genetic fault known as werewolf syndrome, which causes hair to grow on her face

Scientists from the University of Southern California, working with researchers from Beijing, discovered the gene in a Mexican family and Chinese family who both had the condition – known in the medical world as CGH.

Professor Pragna Patel, of the university's Institute for Genetic Medicine, said certain genes appeared to have been 'turned on', which may trigger the excessive hair growth.

In the future, scientists could use drugs to 'turn on' genes, which could trigger hair growth.

Professor Patel added: 'If in fact the inserted sequences turn on a gene that can trigger hair growth, it may hold promise for treating baldness.'

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Baldness Protein Found in Study That May Lead to Treatments

Baldness Protein Found in Study That May Lead to Treatments

By Elizabeth Lopatto - Mar 21, 2012 7:41 PM GMT+0100

Source: bloomberg.com

Male-pattern baldness may be caused by a protein in the scalp, according to research that raises the possibility drugs being tested by Merck & Co. (MRK) and Actelion Ltd. (ATLN)for other uses might prevent hair loss.

Bald spots had an excessive amount of a protein called prostaglandin D2 or PGD2, according to a study in Science Translational Medicine. Merck’s experimental treatment for facial flushing and Actelion’s allergy compound, both in late-stage studies, block the protein.

About eight out of 10 white men experience some balding before the age of 70, according to the researchers. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)’s Rogaine and Merck’s Propecia slow the loss, and some users see minor hair growth. Men may be able to regrow all their hair if the inhibiting protein is removed, said George Cotsarelis, chairman of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

“We really do think if you remove the inhibition, you get longer hair,” Cotsarelis, a study author, said in a telephone interview. “We don’t know” if the follicles will return to their former lengths, he said.

The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and other medical groups.

Bald Parts
The researchers looked at all the genes in the scalp samples from five men, comparing the bald parts to the haired parts. They found higher expressions of the gene that produces PGD2 in the bald samples, compared to the spots with hair. With that as a guide, they found in samples of 17 men with hair loss that PGD2 was three times higher in the bald spots than where hair was growing. The scientists then used mice to show that excessive PGD2 decreased follicles.

Previous work has shown that the stem cells that create hair are still intact in bald men, Cotsarelis said. The follicles are also there, though they look smaller and produce thinner, shorter hair. Over time, the hair is so short it no longer passes the surface of the skin.

“This makes me wonder if this is the pathway,” saidParadi Mirmirani, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo, California. She wasn’t involved in the study. “In terms of therapeutics, it really opens the door to have someone come in and target these in a very narrow way.”

Final Studies
Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, is testing laropiprant as a flushing inhibitor to be administered with niacin. Allschwil, Switzerland-based Actelion’s setipiprant is being studied as a treatment for allergic inflammation of nasal pathways. Both therapies are in the final phase of testing generally needed for regulatory approval.

Merck isn’t studying the anti-flushing drug in hair loss, said Ian McConnell, a Merck spokesman, in a telephone interview.“We haven’t seen any signals” in patient trials that the therapy might reduce baldness, he said.

Actelion isn’t testing setipiprant as a baldness treatment, said Roland Haefeli, a company spokesman.

The role prostaglandins might play in hair growth was hinted at by Allergan Inc. (AGN)’s Latisse, which is an artificial version of prostaglandin F2-alpha, said Mirmirani. Latisse was originally developed for glaucoma, and doctors discovered it made eyelashes grow.

“They could pick out who was on it from the waiting room because of the super-long eyelashes,” Mirmirani said in a telephone interview.

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10 Funniest Solutions for Baldness

 

4/5/2013 under Misc- by Grace Murano

Source: oddee.com
 

Use a temporary sticker

Do you know someone who is having trouble accepting the fact that they have become follicly challenged? Encourage them to embrace, nay show off, all that hairless real estate with the Tattoupees. This fantastic set includes 35 assorted temporary tattoos housed in a neat little tin. Bald is beautiful. (Buy it Here)

Get a golf visor with flair hair

If you have been feeling follicly challenged when you hit the greens lately, we have the cure; a golf visor with flair hair will do the trick!! Join Bill Murray of Caddyshack fame and be a hit on and off the greens with this new amazing product. Now you can go from that tired comb over to perky, spikey hair that needs no maintenance and comes with a golf visor to boot! You will be the envy of all your golfing buddies when you can play 18 and never worry about the hair again. Think of all the space you'll save in your clubhouse locker by not having all those cumbersome hair products. Where else can you get style and function plus a built in hat for only $21.60?? (Buy it Here)

Have a permanent tattoo of fake hair

If a UK company has its way, men suffering from hair loss will turn to needles and ink to mask their baldness. Birmingham, England-based HiStyl uses what it describes as “a mild form of medical tattooing” to simulate the look of shaved or closely cropped hair. The procedure, which HiStyl calls “hair follicle replication,” takes three hours to complete and requires an additional follow-up session. Clients have to shave or cut their hair in order to blend the tattoos with their natural follicles.

Rent it as ad space

In 2012, 27-year-old entrepreneur Brandon Chicotsky launched a unique service called Bald Logo, turning his bald head into a billboard for businesses willing to pay him $320 per day, and walking around Austin, Texas to get as much exposure as possible.

How does the old saying go? “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” That's exactly what Brandon Chicotsky did after he lost most of the hair on his head at a very young age. ”Because I didn't get to choose to be bald I thought I'd bring bald and beautiful back,” said Chicotsky, who also decided to use his head as an actual business. Last month, the young entrepreneur launched Bald Logo, and since then he's been flooded with inquiries from businesses interested in having their logos temporarily tattooed on his or one of his coworkers' heads, for a fee of $320 a day. Brandon and his team have perfected the tattoos to withstand any weather conditions, and will spend six hours a day walking the streets of Austin garnering attention for their clients. Bald Logo currently has three “bald angelicals” on its staff, but the ambitious businessman plans to hire more walking advertising spaces and expand to other cities.(Link | Via)

Camouflage it

(Link)

Comb it over

The king of comb-overs, Donald Trump, shows you how to do it. Do it any other way and... you're fired!

Cover it with art

A few years ago, when he started to go bald, English artist Philip Levine decided he didn't want to shave his head like everyone else. Instead, he opted to turn it into a canvas for his art. That's how the "headism" art movement was born. While others complain about losing their hair, young Philip Levine looks at the glass as half full: being bald gives him full freedom in a very specific and original way. Ever since he started shaving his head in 2006, he began using it as a canvas for his various design ideas, and soon trend websites started posting photos of his bald artworks. In 2009 he realized his head was becoming an inspiration in the art world and decided to put on a show. Ever since then, his name and the headism art he pioneered have become iconic within London's art and fashion scenes.(Link | Via)

Tattoo it with humor

Cover it with a cap

A funny men's hat that reads, "Wish you were hair." (Buy it Here)

Show all the hair you've got

If you don't have enough hair on your head but plenty of it on other parts of your body, your best option is to confuse the viewers.

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Stem cell hair follicle creates hope for the bald, lab animals

Stem cell hair follicle creates hope for the bald, lab animals

Published: 14 Dec 10 11:36 CET

Source: thelocal.de

 

Berlin researchers have grown the world’s first hair follicle using stem cells, giving hope to both the bald and animal rights activists around the world, a media report said Tuesday.

 

The hair follicle created by bioengineers at the capital’s Technical University (TU) is somewhat thinner than a normal scalp follicle, but will provide both hair implant possibilities and end the need for millions of animal tests in the future, daily Die Welt said.

Created by bioengineer and doctor Roland Lauster and his team, the hair follicle can be used to research the causes of hair loss, and may also be used for more effective implants than hair plugs – after clinical studies, of course.

“Preparations for this are already in motion,” Lauster told Die Welt.

Additional purposes may include research on hair growth, structure and pigmentation, as well as the effects of toxic substances.

Nanoparticles enter the skin through hair follicles, thus the new invention could tap into the enormous cosmetic testing market, which has seen the number of animal experiments explode in recent years, the paper said.

“Since 1950, the development of new chemicals has gone up 500-fold, and so has the number of animal tests for the licensing of these,” Lauster said.

Skin and hair follicles created in a lab could replace the need for test animals, the paper wrote.

The professor plans to team up with Dr. Uwe Marx to establish a hair follicle test system, then move on to creating a miniature liver, kidney and bone marrow to form a multi-organ biochip to test pharmaceutical and cosmetic substances.

The biochip, to be created at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology, will enable the cells and mini-organs to work together in a closed circuit.

“Building large organs such as complete livers or kidneys has not yet worked, but miniature organs have,” Lauster told the paper.

In the future, hundreds of these biochips could be used to “quickly and safely” test the toxic effects of hundreds of substances, he added.

The Local/ka

Source: dw.de @ YouTube

 

Scientists in Berlin have used human adult stem cells to develop hair follicles, from which hair then grows naturally. The treatment provides new hope for people suffering from hair loss.Only a few hair follicles would need to be taken from the"patient"and used to generate as much new hair as is needed, which can then be grafted. This breakthrough has also brought the scientists a big step closer to their original research goal, which was to use lab-generated hair follicles on a chip as a substitute for animal experiments in testing creams and cosmetics. Many substances in the creams we use actually enter the body through our hair follicles rather than our skin.



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The New Science of Hair Growth

The New Science of Hair Growth

Robot folliculr surgeons, invisible micrografts, in vitro hair cloning . . . scientists have a wider array of weapons than ever before in the war on baldness. Many believe we're finally on the verge of banishing it forever 

By: Michael Behar
Source: menshealth.com

Training Hair Cells to Grow

Nude mice are the foot soldiers for the war on balding. These dainty pink-hued rodents have been bred or genetically altered to remain hairless throughout their lives. They can be ordered by the mischief-load from medical suppliers and endure poking and prodding and other unspeakable horrors for the sake of balding men everywhere.

In Philadelphia, Ken Washenik, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president of scientific and medical development for Aderans Research Institute and a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at New York University's Langone Medical Center, shows me slides of nude mice on his laptop. They have undergone a new type of hair-cloning procedure that Dr. Washenik has been developing for Aderans. The company, which has its headquarters in Tokyo, is the world's largest manufacturer of wigs. It also owns Bosley, which operates 88 hair-transplant clinics in North America.

When I arrive at Aderans, Dr. Washenik hastily ushers me past several labs, perhaps wary I might glimpse some sort of trade secret, and into an empty conference room. What he does reveal is that his approach to hair cloning (he calls it follicular neogenesis) doesn't rely solely on dermal papillae. "We are using a two-cell construct, growing not just dermal papillae, but also another type of cell from the follicle," he explains.

As the thinking goes, disparate cell types already communicate with one another in the follicle to regenerate hair. Dr. Washenik believes that if he can re-create that environment in the lab, cultured cells won't get dementia and forget how to make hair. "The different cells in the follicle are smarter than we are," Dr. Washenik says. "They already know they are supposed to be hairy. In 8 days, we grew a ball of hair that never existed before on the back of a mouse."

Dr. Washenik clicks an image file on his computer: The photo shows what looks like Piglet with a sable Mohawk. But there is a caveat: "These were hair cells from a mouse that were injected into a mouse. When researchers injected human cells into a mouse, they didn't get the same results."

This disappointed Dr. Washenik and other researchers, because unlike other organs, follicles are supposed to be immune privileged: When transplanted across or between species, they're expected to grow normally, without being rejected or provoking infection. He hopes to have better luck in clinical trials, when he will transplant human cells into humans. Aderans is in the second phase of a human trial, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The company is pouring serious cash (Dr. Washenik won't say how much) into its hair-cloning effort. Dr. Washenik is also intrigued by other researchers who are pursuing another pathway. They're cultivating in vitro microscopic hairs, or "proto-hairs," as Dr. Washenik dubs them. "These are early follicular structures that you can place in the scalp with the same technology that's used for a hair transplant," he says. "The big hurdle so far is getting the cells to multiply to make enough hair. Once we culture them, they sometimes die or de-differentiate."

But Dr. Washenik remains confident. "The sooner we figure this out, the better," he says. "So many people are waiting for this technology. I know that with every medical advance, the first one to market becomes the leader, and everyone else plays catch-up." Like many of the scientists I meet, his passion for a cure is personal. "I started going bald at 25," he says, tussling his hair to flaunt his 2,200-graft transplant. "While I was working on my Ph.D., I was mixing up homemade minoxidil [the active ingredient in Rogaine] in my lab."

A few blocks away is a start-up called Follica. One of its cofounders, George Cotsarelis, M.D., is a cutaneous biologist and associate professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1990, Dr. Cotsarelis was investigating the biological mechanisms of skin regeneration. "I was studying stem cells and found a population of them in the hair follicle, in a strange area called 'the bulge,'" he tells me when I stop by his office at U. Penn's School of Medicine. "We didn't know the function of the area, and we almost blew it off."

From then on, Dr. Cotsarelis started paying more attention to hair follicles. After a series of more recent experiments on mice, he made two important discoveries. First, he found that bulge cells aid in the formation of new hair follicles, suggesting that these cells influence hair growth during embryonic development, when we were bobbing around in the womb. He also learned that, throughout our lives, these same stem cells awaken to mend minor cuts and burns, as well as deeper wounds in the skin. What baffled Dr. Cotsarelis is why, if a healing wound is populated with bulge stem cells, new follicles don't form. The answer would at least explain why hair doesn't grow from scars.

Dr. Cotsarelis conducted further studies designed to reveal what kinds of molecular compounds (e.g., hormones and proteins) are present during hair-follicle development in mice embryos and are also present in adult mice. A major one, which he wrote about in a 2007 Nature article, was something called Wnt (pronounced wint), a network of proteins first identified in fruit flies.

Curious, Dr. Cotsarelis applied Wnt to small lesions purposely cut into nude mice (such gracious, noble critters). To his shock, follicles formed and sprouted hair. So if a person is bald, the obvious strategy would seem to be to douse his scalp with Wnt and wait for hair to grow. "The problem is that Wnt is involved in a lot of other things, one of which is skin cancer," Dr. Cotsarelis says. "It's very tricky business."

The idea behind Follica is to develop a procedure in which a surgeon would lightly wound the scalp—something akin to microdermabrasion, an antiaging treatment—to disrupt the skin and then apply a compound that would influence hair development in the area. This would trick the cells into reverting to an embryonic state, one in which they are genetically pre-programmed to make hair rather than simply repair skin, as they're predisposed to do after we're born. "Just when cells are deciding, 'Do I make a hair follicle? Or do I make an epidermis?' we can influence them with a protein to go down a hair-follicle pathway."

Testing the Science on Humans

My hair started thinning when I was 32. I'm now 40, and my shedding has eased up. Dr. Harris informs me I have plenty left for a follicular unit transplant. But after watching Scott's procedure, I'm a little freaked out. Yet, all the specialists I speak with urge anyone dealing with hair loss to act fast, because once the hairs are gone, they're gone for good.

"Absolutely no one concerned about hair loss should wait," Dr. Washenik says. He started taking Propecia when he was in his thirties (he's now 50), and he uses Rogaine religiously. He is a big advocate of drug therapies, and readily champions surgical options such as follicular unit grafting.

Dr. Washenik examines my scalp and announces, "Rogaine is made for you. You're not bald; your hairs are just miniaturized." I'm a chemical-phobe, so I'd rather save my dough and wait for a viable hair-cloning procedure, which many of the experts I talked to claim is less than 5 years away.

Intercytex, a public company based in London, may be closest to a marketable product, says Jerry Cooley, M.D., a transplant surgeon who has been consulting for the firm since 2001. Nobody directly employed by Intercytex would speak to me for this story. "We do not feel that exposure of our research is helpful," wrote Jeff Teumer, Intercytex's director of research, in a curt e-mail. But Dr. Cooley, who works closely with Teumer, tells me that Intercytex scientists have successfully grown large batches of cloned proto-hairs similar to those that other researchers have been struggling to keep alive.

What's more, in animal experiments, the Intercytex team has observed cloned hair follicles growing hair again after the original hairs were plucked. This suggests that their cloned follicles cycle through the entire life span of hair—three phases known as anagen (growth), catagen (transitional), and telogen (resting)—something no other researchers have been able to do.

A key to the team's success has been growing proto-hairs in a special medium, licensed from a Japanese inventor, which contains cultured skin cells known as keratinocytes. "I'm very excited about this technology," Dr. Cooley says. "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when."

Bessam Farjo, M.D., a hair-restoration surgeon contracted by Intercytex to run its ongoing clinical trials, says, "All I can tell you is that we've grown a significant number of hairs on animals through this technique." It sounds encouraging, and Dr. Farjo expects to complete clinical trials this year.

Hair cloning will be pricey initially, so early adopters may be men who are not only wealthy, but also desperate because they don't have enough hair left to do a follicular unit transplant. Cloning could also be ideal for younger men who aren't good candidates for follicular grafting. "Younger guys aren't suitable for current surgical techniques because we don't know how much hair they are going to lose," Dr. Farjo says.

Imagine if the receded hairline of a 25-year-old male were replaced with a follicular unit transplant. If the rest of his hair were to fall out—and going bald at an early age generally means it will—he wouldn't have enough hair to complete a second or third follicular unit transplant, so he'd end up with a solitary plume sprouting from his forehead. "It would look like unfinished business, which is why we typically avoid working on young guys," Dr. Farjo says. "But if I know I'll never run out of hair, thanks to the new cell therapy, I can treat anyone."

Nobody is sure how the actual cloning process will be implemented. Most surgeons speculate that they'll use boring tools similar to the existing ones used for harvesting follicular units. The follicular units will be sent to centralized labs, where industrial incubators will mass-produce millions of follicle cells for a relatively low cost.

Another question is how will the cloned cells be transplanted? Instead of transplanting follicular units, your surgeon may inject cloned cells into micro-incisions, or he may implant lab-grown hair follicles. It could be fast, clean, and painless. Or it might entail something closer to Dr. Cotsarelis's method at Follica. At Intercytex, technicians are tinkering with sundry techniques. "We're experimenting with varying the number of cells in each injection, and whether we have to inject the cells into the skin as it is, or if we have to pre-stimulate the skin," Dr. Farjo says.

Whatever the outcome, choices will abound. In the future, hair cloning will coexist alongside follicular unit transplants, drug therapies, and emerging technologies still incubating in the labs. For his part, Dr. Harris is also part of a team designing the world's first follicular extraction robot: It will fully automate the procedure, making it magnitudes faster and less expensive.

While Scott was being prepped for surgery, Dr. Harris took me into his office to show me a photo of the $25 million speed surgeon (the actual machine was locked in a storage closet a few floors above us). At about 6 feet tall with a fixed base and a mechanical arm with multiple joints, it resembles one of those space-age automatons you might see on a vehicle assembly line at a Toyota plant. Dr. Harris has already tested it on a couple of willing volunteers (with no alarming mishaps) and is preparing to apply for FDA approval under the name Restoration Robotics.

"We think the robot might be able to extract a thousand grafts an hour," Dr. Harris says. "That's more than triple what can be done by hand. This will broaden the market so that more people can afford the procedure. There may be a time soon when hair-transplant surgery will be available to everyone."

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Histogen Announces Initial Results from Phase I/II Clinical Trial of HSC

Histogen Announces Initial Results from Phase I/II Clinical Trial of HSC

Source: histogen.com

Data shows significant efficacy at all time points and all treated hair loss regions

SAN DIEGO, October 19, 2012 - Histogen, Inc., a regenerative medicine company developing innovative therapies based on the products of cells grown under simulated embryonic conditions, will present preliminary data from the ongoing clinical trial of its Hair Stimulating Complex (HSC) today at the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS) Annual Meeting. Statistically significant improvement was seen across all targeted hair growth parameters in this Phase I/II clinical trial, with an 86% responder rate.

 

The double-blind Phase I/II clinical trial was undertaken to further examine the safety and efficacy of intradermal injections of HSC in 56 men with androgenetic alopecia. In addition to other safety outcome measures, clinical evaluation of blood serum chemistry, hematology and urinalysis showed no indication of toxicity over 12 weeks. The treatment was well-tolerated and no study-related adverse events have been reported.

In this second clinical trial of HSC, which was designed with an additional treatment timepoint, the increase in total hair count was 46.5% above that seen in the pilot HSC trial at 12 weeks. Statistical significance was noted in all efficacy endpoints, which include increases in total hair count (p=0.0013), terminal hairs (p=0.0135), and hair thickness (p=0.026). A significant increase in vellus hair count (p=0.033) was seen for the first time, supporting the hypothesis that the HSC treatment rescues dying follicles, in addition to converting vellus to terminal hairs and increasing the number of hairs per follicle. Statistical significance continued to be seen at the 24 week time point.

"We are excited that HSC has not only continued to show unprecedented results, but that the addition of a second treatment time point in the Phase I/II clinical trial has resulted in even greater hair growth than the pilot study," said Gail K. Naughton, Ph.D., Histogen CEO and Chairman of the Board. "Particularly compelling is the growth seen in more difficult types and stages of hair loss. Without limitations to treatment area, age or stage of balding, HSC has the potential to expand the hair restoration market by offering a successful option to those that currently have none."

Available non-surgical treatment options for alopecia focus on younger patients in the earlier stages of hair loss, with a primary purpose of retaining existing hair and supporting limited hair regrowth. This is not the trend seen in the clinical trials of HSC. In both the pilot and Phase I/II clinical trial, HSC treatment has shown efficacy across age groups, with subjects age 40-59 seeing cosmetically significant results beginning at 12 weeks, including a mean increase of 39% in terminal hairs and 19.4% in total hair count in this age group in the current trial.

Importantly, the efficacy of HSC is not limited by hair loss region. The Phase I/II clinical trial has shown noted new hair growth in subjects treated in all regions of the scalp, including temporal recession, mid-scalp and vertex. Subjects receiving HSC in the temporal recession, which is known to be more difficult to treat than other areas of hair loss, saw marked improvement in terminal hair count, with a mean increase of 22.6% at 12 weeks and 25.2% at the 24 week time point.

In addition to the Phase I/II data, Dr. Naughton will present results from a Physician-sponsored IND of HSC conducted by Dr. Craig Ziering, an ISHRS member and leading hair restoration surgeon. Five men and five women received up to four treatments of HSC, with all subjects showing positive hair growth. Increased hair growth was seen as early as 6 weeks, with clinically and cosmetically relevant results seen as early as 18 weeks.

"The clinical data seen to date with HSC is very compelling," said Dr. Craig Ziering, Founder and CEO of Ziering Medical. "Not only is the strong safety profile clinically important, but we have seen cosmetically significant results, with coverage of thinning areas, in a clinical setting. In addition, the response seen in women treated with HSC is unprecedented."

HSC is a complex of proteins and growth factors naturally secreted by multipotent cells under Histogen's proprietary growth conditions. The proteins within HSC, such as KGF, VEGF, and follistatin, are involved in signaling stem cells in the body, and have been shown to be key in hair formation and the stimulation of resting hair follicles.

"Scalp Injection of Active Embryonic-like Cell-secreted Proteins and Growth Factors" will be presented by Dr. Naughton at the ISHRS Annual Meeting, taking place October 17-20, 2012, in the Bahamas.

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FUE Hair Transplant Surgery

Source: dermhairclinic.com

 

WHAT IS AN FUE HAIR TRANSPLANT?

 

Hair transplantation originated in Japan in the early 1900s and has evolved greatly over the past century. In the 1980s, as part of this evolution, came the advent of follicular unit extraction (FUE). FUE, wherein the practitioner extracts follicular units (natural groupings of 1 to 4 hairs) one at a time, is now the ideal method of extraction for hair transplantation.

 

FUE method of transplantation is a no-stitch procedure that involves implanting the grafted follicular units into the balding recipient area. While FUE hair transplantation requires the practitioner to possess a higher skill set in order to perform the procedure successfully, this technique continually yields the most successful outcomes in hair density, natural-looking hairlines, and minimized scarring. FUE hair transplantation is generally pursued for the treatment of androgenic alopecia, also known as pattern baldness. This genetic hair loss condition results in balding of the crown, front, hairline, and temple points. But with the innovations of the Follicular Unit Extraction, it is nearly impossible to tell a natural head of hair from one that has undergone hair transplantation.

 

FUE hair transplant patient before and after a successful surgery.

PREPARING FOR FOLLICULAR UNIT EXTRACTION

Once you’ve had a one on one consultation with your physician and decided to proceed, you will be given the necessary instructions to prepare yourself for your day of surgery. Some of these instructions may be tailored to your particular needs. Put the instructions into place whenever specified and follow them carefully. On the morning of your surgery, you should have a bountiful breakfast and arrive with a thoroughly shampooed scalp. Upon arrival at the clinic, “before” photographs will be taken of you. The donor area, being the back of the head in most cases, will then be shaved and prepared for surgery.

 

Hairline design and blueprint for implantation.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING AN FUE PROCEDURE?

 

First, the patient is made to lie face down on the operating table. Local anesthesia will be administered to the donor area, as well as intramuscular hypnotics for the patient to ingest orally, for the purpose of relaxation.

 

Your surgeon will then begin to extract carefully selected follicular units from the donor area. The surgeon will use a micropunching tool, needle devices, and magnification for the extraction process. (Vacuum-based mass production machines may compromise your results, and robots lack the necessary human touch that contributes to an optimal procedure. These mass production line cookie cutter FUE machines are at their primitive stages of development with much room for improvement. They are no substitute for an experienced FUE surgeon with a verifiable portfolio of patient results.) Each follicle extracted may consist of anywhere from one to four, or even five hairs. The extracted grafts are then preserved in a holding solution. This part of the surgery is the most laborious and time-consuming, since unlicensed technicians are legally forbidden to perform follicular extraction. Your FUE surgeon or an experienced associate (one who is licensed to perform surgery by the state) should perform this entire process himself, to ensure the integrity of each extracted graft.

 

Body and facial hair are harvested in a similar but more nuanced manner by experienced practitioners, skilled in advanced forms of FUE hair transplant.

 

After all extractions have been done, the patient can turn over to sit face up. Many would use this time to listen to music, or watch a movie or television. Local anesthesia will be administered to the bald recipient area at this time. Using customized blades, microscopic slits are made in this area for implantation of the extracted follicles. Implantation of the follicles is the step requiring the highest level of skill, as the resulting design or “look” is determined by the slit preparation. Hairline creation, which should have been discussed in detail during your consultation, happens here. The hairline is the most creative work in the FUE hair transplant process. The utmost care is given to produce a natural looking hairline. In order to achieve this, the follicles containing a single hair are implanted at the front of the hairline to build a gradual wall of hair, which is filled in by units containing two to three hairs to provide the area with density.

 

During an FUE surgery at DermHair Clinic, we provide the patient with beverages intermittently and serve lunch on our pent house patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The patient can also take bathroom breaks whenever needed. After the procedure is done, “after” photos are taken. (The same confidentiality principles apply here as with the “before” pictures.) No stitches or dressings are used and a medical assistant will counsel the patient regarding care instructions at this time.

 

Donor area immediately following transplant.

 

AFTER THE FUE PROCEDURE
 

After you receive detailed instructions from the medical assistant—which include everything from showering to exercising—you will be given a prescription for mild painkillers, antibiotics, and topical medication.

 

Signs of wounding in the donor area should deplete by day seven, as well. Typically, the donor area will continue to heal to the point where scarring is highly unnoticeable.

 

Scabs in the recipient area will usually fall off within seven to 14 days. This area will go through a phase of shedding until the eighth week. Typically, your FUE hair transplant will boast new hair growth by three and a half to four months, usually maxing out at 12 months. However, for up to 18 months, the new hair will continue to thicken and mature, blending in more with the surrounding hair.

 

WHY CHOOSE FUE HAIR TRANSPLANT OVER DIFFERENT HAIR RESTORATION OPTIONS?

 

There are different options for treating hair loss, not all surgical:

1. Minoxidil, commonly known as Rogaine, and finasteride, commonly known as Propecia.
2. Surgery is the most popular means of permanent hair restoration with three main techniques at the forefront:

• scalp reduction
• temporoparieto-occipital (TPO) flaps and other variations of flaps
• Punch graft, minigrafts, and micrografts
• Hair transplantation, including follicular unit strip surgery and FUE hair transplant

Rogaine and Propecia are the two FDA approved, prescription-based hair restoration drugs on the market. These drugs must be used continuously in order to stop hair loss, unlike FUE hair transplantation, which is a permanent procedure.

Scalp reduction and temporoparieto-occipital flaps, or TPO flaps, have become obsolete due to consistently botched results, a high probability of permanent scarring, and the potential for nerve damage. Also, they are considered hair restoration surgeries, unlike the FUE hair transplant, which is transplantation surgery.

The FUE hair transplant is an improvement of the punch graft technique. Punch grafts are 4mm grafts which result in what we call “doll’s hair.” Another unsightly outcome of punch graft surgery is the 4mm round bald marks left permanently on the back of the head. Minigrafts and micrografts were developed as an improvement of this method, but still yield unnatural, pluggy-looking results as compared to FUE hair transplant.

First-time FUE hair transplant patient sees successful results.

FUE Hair Transplant vs Strip Surgery:

Follicular unit strip surgery (FUSS) also known as “strip harvesting,” is considered the traditional method and has been the recent leader in hair transplant surgery. FUSS extracts a strip of flesh from the rear and/or sides of the head, which will be microscopically divided to provide donor follicles for transplantation.

A disadvantage of FUSS is that it promises a permanent linear scar to be left as a result. The patient must then wear a longer hairstyle in order to conceal the scar.

FUE does not extract follicular units in a strip of flesh like FUSS. This means Follicular Unit Extraction is more labor intensive for practitioners, requires longer operation time, and is more expensive for patients. However, consumer demand agrees that the pros of FUE hair transplant as compared to FUSS far outweigh the cons. FUE hair transplantation offers:

• A less invasive procedure
• A quicker recovery time
• The possibility to use finer hairs, such as those found at the nape of the neck, to better refine the hairline
• No linear scarring; only tiny round, cosmetically negligible marks in the donor area. This also means patients will be free to wear short hair styles, not bound to long hair styles for concealing a strip scar.
• Less likelihood of permanent nerve damage.
• An infinitely larger pool of donor hair, as FUE hair transplant enables body hair transplantation (BHT)

Body Hair Transplantation:

Furthermore, advanced FUE practitioners such as Dr. Umar—a pioneer and world leader in this technique—are able to markedly broaden the pool of donor hair through the advent of body hair transplantation. BHT allows for the extraction of donor hair from the beard, chest, stomach, arms, and legs, with cosmetically negligible scarring. Patients who lack head donor hair and were therefore considered poor candidates in the past now join the ranks of potential FUE hair transplant patients.

FUE hair transplant repair using non-head hair.

GOOD CANDIDATES FOR FOLLICULAR UNIT EXTRACTION

Potential candidates for FUE hair transplant using head hair only are those who do not suffer a total depletion of scalp donor hair. An FUE clinic that does not practice BHT would be unable to service a patient without sufficient head hair remaining in tact.

A clinic that does put body hair transplantation into practice, such as the DermHair Clinic of Los Angeles, would be equipped to service patients whose scalp hair loss is so severe that their head donor hair is not sufficient for transplantation. This includes FUE hair transplant patients who:

• Suffer from severe pattern baldness
• Have excessive scarring from previous surgery
• Have endured some sort of accident or burn that has left them bald

POOR CANDIDATES FOR FUE PROCEDURES

While follicular unit extraction using body hair transplantation has changed the face of hair loss, there remain some people who still will not qualify for this type of surgery.

1. People who lack the supply of good quality head, body, or beard hair will not be candidates for any type of FUE hair transplant, even with the use of BHT.
2. There is a relative contraindication for hair transplant generally in patients who are too young, i.e., below the age of 24. This is due to the fact that a person under the age of 24 who suffers from androgenic alopecia has likely not finished balding. Also, this age group may be psychologically and financially unprepared to grasp the long term implications of hair transplant. That said, after careful counseling, even young patients can undergo an FUE hair transplant. Counseling must fully take into account: future hair loss, total available donor pool, and the patient’s ability to countenance future follow-up transplantation (which could create an unnatural look if not done).
3. Some people with extremely curly or kinked follicles, such as most of African descent. These patients should ideally under go a test procedure to determine their transection rates and consequently their suitability for FUE hair transplant.
4. People with an abnormal tendency to scar, as in scar hypertrophy, or keloids.
5. People with bleeding or clotting abnormalities.
6. People with allergies to local anesthesia.

Would have been a poor FUE hair transplant candidate without BHT.

FUE hair transplant on a younger patient.

COMPLICATIONS OF AN FUE SURGERY

Follicular unit extraction is a safe and minimally invasive method of hair transplantation. Patients can minimize their risk by following all pre- and post-procedural instructions and by selecting an experienced surgeon. However complications may yet arise even in the best of circumstances. Factors that increase the chance of complications of FUE hair transplant could include:

• Physiology of the patient
• An inexperienced practitioner
• A practitioner who values quantity over quality
• A practitioner who abdicates his skills to unlicensed personnel or flawed machines ( eg vacuum based technologies or robots that lack the human touch)
• Unknown and unforeseen complication factors may arise on rare occasion

WHY AUTOMATED FUE TECHNOLOGY IS LIMITED IN PRODUCING THE BEST HAIR TRANSPLANT RESULTS

In the opinion of the author, “hands-free” extractors such as the artas robots and vacuum suction are fraught with to many potential problems to be the answer for your FUE hair transplant. No automated device can discern a prime follicular unit as an experienced physician can, nor extract it with the care required to preserve its life for implantation into the recipient area.

These are issues common to automated FUE tools.

NeoGraft:

• Uses an air vacuum to extract donor follicles. Air exposure is detrimental to extracted hair follicles. However those who choose to undergo FUE with Neograft can request to have the suction turned off.
• When used to implant grafts, it would not allow follicles to be tightly packed into the recipient area, as the implantation device is too large for such specificity.
• Once suctioned, the follicle may experience additional trauma due to impact against the receiving tube.
• If used to place grafts in the recipient would increase the risk of buried grafts due to the relative loss of depth control. This leads to cysts and pitting on the scalp.

Artas:

• Higher transection rates of up to 15% has been cited for this device although its manufacturer’s and vendors claim the transection rate is improving with time, this is difficult to ascertain at this point. In the hands of an experienced FUE practitioner a transection rate of 2-5% is common.
• Can only be used on people with straight dark brown or black hair.
• Since it uses a sharp punch followed by a dull punch, there is an increased risk of buried grafts s the dull punch may push the partially separated grafts furthe into the scalp increasing the risk of cyst formation, not to mention the graft that is damaged in the process.
• Since the machine would have punch out hundreds of grafts before the physician typical check in, if transection rates are high, many grafts would have been wasted before the procedure is aborted.
• It is a cumbersome process. The patient is placed in a particular position while an area of about 5 by 10 cm is isolated for the machine to gauge. The distance from the machine is set. The machine then goes to work. obviously any movement on the patients path would be problematic. After this area is worked, the physician then removes the grafts with a forcep. Then the process of strapping the patients head in a different position and machine calibration is done all over again. The procedure is clearly too cumbersome for the patient and not efficient when compared to an experienced FUE surgeon using a hand held device to feel around each and every grafts as it is removed. Control is by the seconds rather than between hundreds of graft separation.

FOLLICULAR UNIT EXTRACTION CONTINUES TO PROVE ITS VALUE

The FUE hair transplant is, hands down, today’s leading surgical technique for hair restoration. While it does require practitioners to take their time implementing the utmost skill, the life-changing results patients enjoy makes it a highly rewarding process overall. FUE hair transplant using body hair transplantation has also become much more widely used and accepted because of its undeniable success rates in the hands of experienced practitioners.

More specialized branches of Follicular Unit Extraction have developed. This includes an area known as facial hair to head transplant. Follicles from the beard region are extracted and inserted into areas of hair loss. This course of action is used in cases where head hair is not enough to create sufficient coverage. If you would like to read more about the applications of beard hair, click here.

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