Propecia & Natural Herbal Alternative

Article by HairlossTalk.com

Review of Revivogen & Topical Spiro by Bryan Shelton

The folks at Revivogen are saying that the most important part of this product is the novel use of fatty acids (gamma Linolenic acid, alpha Linolenic acid, Linolenic acid, and a few others) which are supposed to be potent inhibitors of 5AR. They base this on studies done in the 1990's by Liang and Liao; you can see these studies here in the Hair loss Studies Database under the "DHT Inhibition" section. But reading these studies almost immediately raised a red flag in my mind: there was no mention made of whether or not these fatty acids inhibit the all-important 5AR type 2, or just type 1 (or *both*, for that matter). I rolled my eyes and wondered if this was going to turn out to be another "azelaic acid" type thing, where the evidence is non-specific and shows inhibition of 5AR, but doesn't break it down into type 1 vs. type 2 (this is a good topic for another post). I resolved to retrieve the full articles and find out what they had to say.

Well, I went two-for-three: I got the first and third articles here on HairlossTalk.com, but the medical library didn't have the more obscure second one, which was published in the Journal of the Formosan Medical Association. However, I made up for this by finding a paper by a completely different group, writing on the same subject: "Inhibition of Steroid 5alpha- Reductase Activity by Aliphatic Fatty Acids", Niederprum, Schweikert, Thuroff, and Zanker, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1995 September 30; 768:227-30. This study is also in HairlossTalk's Hair Loss Studies Database under the "DHT Inhibition" section. To make a long story a little shorter: these studies *do* establish that these fatty acids (or at the very least, gamma- Linolenic acid) inhibit *both* types of 5AR equally well.

DHT Inhibition in Revivogen

How well do they inhibit them? Let's look at "Growth Suppression of Hamster
Flank Organs by Topical Application of Gamma-Linolenic and Other Fatty Acid
Inhibitors of 5alpha-Reductase" by Liang and Liao. (Also in the Hair Loss Studies). Hamster flank organs have long been used to test the effects of
both androgens and antiandrogens; these organs and obviously their sebaceous
glands and the hair growing over them, are all very androgen- sensitive. Liang
and Liao found in one test that 1 mg of gamma-Linolenic acid (I'll call it GLA
from now on) applied topically to these organs once a day reduced their testosterone-stimulated growth by about 50%. In another similar test, the figure was about 66%. Still another test using 2-4 mg a day of GLA produced 60% to 70% inhibition. Please keep in mind that these are NOT the percentage reductions in DHT, but the percentage reductions in an actual measured androgen-sensitive biological effect! There were also suppression effects in the growth of sebaceous glands and hair (keep in mind that this is *body* hair, so this is the expected effect), although they didn't supply numerical data for these parameters.


So how does this compare to other topical antiandrogens? I found two studies that
tested the effects of Spironolactone, potassium canrenoate (the main metabolite of Spironolactone), and the powerful Cyproterone acetate, all applied topically on these same hamster flank organs; plus, another study that tested *injected* Spironolactone. The first found about a 30% reduction in the testosterone-stimulated increase in flank organ size, about a 27% reduction in sebaceous gland size, and a modest 13% reduction in the diameter of hairs, all from 0.4 mg/day of topical Spiro. The second found a 39.3% flank organ reduction with 0.3 mg/day of topical Spiro., 29.5% from 3 mg/day of topical Spiro., and about an average of 35% from 0.3 mg/day of topical Cyproterone acetate. Sebaceous gland reductions were about 33% for both doses of Spiro., and a more modest 20% for the Cyproterone acetate. The third study found 40% and 51% reductions in sebaceous gland cross-sectional area by daily *injections* of 0.5 mg and 2.0 mg, respectively. The results of these similarly-conducted studies, all performed on hamster flank organs, seem to show a superiority of GLA over the established antiandrogens Spironolactone and Cyproterone acetate. 1 mg GLA produced flank organ reductions of somewhere between 50% and 66%, while the drugs produced a remarkably consistent average of about 35%. Equally important, there seemed to be no more extra response from increasing doses of Spironolactone!

Continued on next page...

- For more information on Revivogen, view our Revivogen Product Review for Men
- Check out the Topical Spiro S5 Cream Product Review for Men and for Womenroduct review.
- Women, please read our Revivogen Product Review for Women
- For more information on purchasing Revivogen: Revivogen Shop

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