Promising Discovery of a Hair Loss Treatment

Many men suffer from baldness, and the market is flooded with all types of salves, creams, and pills to treat the condition. Although it is a genetic condition, it is a well-known fact that stress continues to cause this problem. There are products on the market that are gimmicks, yet there are also the truly effective products such as organic-based treatment regimes that have made major advances in the fight against hair loss.

A new study conducted at UCLA may have accidentally discovered a way to reverse the process of balding. During a study they were conducting to show how stress affects gastrointestinal function, they found a chemical compound that causes hair growth by blocking a stress-related hormone associated with hair loss.

‘Our findings show that a short-duration treatment with this compound causes an astounding long-term hair regrowth in chronically stressed mutant mice’, said Million Mulugeta, a professor of medicine in the division of digestive diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a corresponding author of the research. ‘This could open new venues to treat hair loss in humans through the modulation of the stress hormone receptors, particularly hair loss related to chronic stress and aging’.

In the experiment, mice had been genetically altered in order for their brains to overproduce corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF), a stress hormone. This hormone causes the mice to lose hair with age and eventually become completely bald on their backs. The researchers have created a chemical named astressin-B, which they believed would be able to block the CRF. After three months they returned to conduct further gastrointestinal studies and discovered the mice had regrown all the hair on their backs. They were indistinguishable from the normal control mice in the study.

Particularly interesting was the very low dosage required for this effect. One shot a day for 5 days remained effective for 4 months. Considering the very short lifespan of rats (about 2 years), this could mean a much longer effective period for humans.

Although this product has not been evaluated yet for human use, it is a very promising discovery for the treatment of hair loss.