Growth-suppressing chemicals in hair follicles

[Bryan]

I'm not discounting the involvemnt of androgens. I'm only questioning the DIRECT involvement. Expand your horizons.

So once again I'm asking you to explain the in vitro experiments in which androgens suppressed the growth of human hair follicles (you had given me a one-word reply of "Where" before, so I earlier had to give you examples of such studies). How do you explain those results?

 

[Bryan]

Sounds like it would only require to eliminate androgens or counter these chemicals.

However, I've seen people who have eliminated most(if not all) androgens in their body(T as well as DHT) and have experienced very limited regrowth. Some even continue experiencing hairloss.

HUH?? It should be common knowledge among everybody (it's basically Hairloss 101) that simply removing androgens doesn't cause much scalp hair regrowth. This is something that's been discussed for years and years and years, my friend.

I agree that just eliminating androgens may not lead to much hair regrowth (post puberty castration for example), but it begs the question:

Then why does finasteride. help differently? If I read her post correctly (please see above highlighted line)... if DHT was eliminated why don't the hairs recover? If I understand the proccess correctly finasteride. does not create growth factors...through the inhibition of 5AR it reduces T conversion to DHT which effects follicles by promoting negative growth factors in those genetically suceptible (basically it just stops the damaging of the follicles and they recover on their own). Why would someone, understanding this, not be suprised or disappointed in limited to no regrowth with the elimination of T and DHT? Why wouldn't they be disappointed that the balding proccess infact continues? If the vast majority of treatments address the androgen side of hairloss, why wouldn't someone reasonably expect to see improvement with the elimination of those implicated androgens? I know of some studies....I know you are correct...but why wouldn't someone expect improvement?

I'm not sure I believe his/her claim about some such patients experiencing "continued hairloss". If they do, it probably isn't androgenetic alopecia. James Hamilton was pretty sure that castration (which doesn't even completely eliminate androgens) is sufficient to halt further male pattern baldness.

 

[Bryan]

An obvious example would be TGF-beta 1 and 2. There are probably numerous other such chemicals, and identifying them is an area of current research.

Do these chemicals occur elsewhere in the body? More than one place? If so what is their pupose at that location? What calls them into action?

"Yes" and "yes" to the first two questions. For the last two, do a Google search on "TGF beta". Wikipedia has a good article on that family of hormones.

 

[Bryan]

Why I respect your opinion is because I know how much work you have put into this subject. Did Hamilton, in his study, mention anything about terminal hair recovery? or did he just address further progression?

Hamilton wrote more than one study/article on that subject over the years. In at least one of them (the 1960 study) he did mention that there may be _some_ limited regrowth in certain cases after castration, but it's certainly not dramatic. Here's what he actually says about that in the DISCUSSION section on the last page:

"The apparent regrowth of coarse hairs after castration of a bald man (Figure 4, #19 and #20) has a parallel in the reversibility of male pattern baldness in experimental animals after reduction in androgenic stimulation. [...] The eunuch in whom coarse hairs seemed to increase in number after removal of the testes was the oldest of the 3 in whom male pattern baldness had developed before orchiectomy. He and 3 other subjects were the only ones under study who were more than 26 years old at the time of castration. Indeed, none of the males studied was more than 38 years of age at the time of castration. Therefore the present observations do not exclude the possibility that castration, if delayed until after the occurrence of changes that appear in the scalp during the middle and old age, might in some cases promote recovery to an extent not observed after castration of younger males who had acquired a more precocious form of male pattern baldness."