Someone mentioned that study once within the context of a completely invalid argument. Of course he got destroyed by swooplol. However my question: Is the study actually good science? I can t believe that nobody ever tried to reproduce something similar.
Well, yeah that study is actually pretty interesting and I fully agree with you that it should at least have been reproduced already.
There are two people who did that experiment many years back, Van Neste and Orentreich. Van Neste did not note that miniaturized hair follicles grew back when transplanted upon mice. But Orentreich did notice that they grew back.
Orentreich did use vellus hair that were approximately 30-40um in diameter so these ain't exactly hardcore miniaturized hair follicles.
Also what I had thought of is that Orentreich used only female mice. These mice have pretty high estrogen levels (higher than a human male, I have searched for that once lol) and very low testosterone levels.
The reversal in Orentreich his study was in one cycle literally. That's interesting but there is some support for that in humans as well for instance simply by using finasteride(
1).
Evidence is presented to support a new concept that miniaturization is an abrupt, large-step process that also can be reversed in 1 hair cycle, as has been shown clinically, with confirmatory histologic evidence, in patients with pattern hair loss responding to finasteride treatment
Anyway even then it's highly unlikely in my opinion that since Orentreich used both human hair follicles from a woman and men the altered hormonal environment of mice would make such rapid reversal happen in these miniaturized human hair follicles.
In my opinion that study indicates that mice might have some factor in their biological nature that might contribute to this or make this happen. This might mean that we simply haven't found that factor yet and that the possibility exists of a very good growth agent that might rapidly reverse vellus hair follicles to terminal ones. And the study you just have shown is relates to this too.
However it doesn't exactly refute that Androgenetic Alopecia is irreversible at a certain timepoint. Still a very interesting study yeah.
It's true that we simply know very little and that we need better models though. Especially in terms of drug testing. Think about minoxidil for instance. Even after extensive testing we still don't know how it works.
@Noisette, found a nice study which is recent from Dr. Lauster who developed a better model for hair follicle research. You know if we for instance knew how minoxidil would exactly work we could maybe develop a more selective drug and have a damn good hair growth agent... As I may quote Dr Lauster his study.;
Despite the intensive research over the past 20 years, our understanding on minoxidil’s mechanism of action remains limited, particularly using ex vivo/in vitro hair follicle-models. However, experimental and clinical results have pointed out minoxidil’s contribution to hair growth, such as the effects on cell growth and senescence.
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The results indicate, that the MF is a promising tool as a preclinical model to predict personalized response, as well as to assess the hair growth potential of new technologies in human hair follicle.
L'oreal is also busy with a better model now.
Nonetheless I think Androgenetic Alopecia at a certain timepoint reflects a irreversible state anyway. I believe creating new hair follicles is really the way to go. Make use of these healthy cells at the back of our head. Let these cells do the job in their own extreme complex language to create a new hair follicle. No worries anymore of DHT pounding on the hair follicles either.
But JAK inhibitors, they really ain't going to work. As much as I would like them too.
) I'm in a DDS program. Which means I'll have a doctorate. So I'm not desperate or gullible. I just hate it when people spew bro science as fact and claim it to be truth, then when someone makes a point against them they throw a temper teantum like a baby all while demanding the other poster "be a man".
