Has Science Asked The Right Questions About male pattern baldness?

[plisk]

It seems to me so much of drug development for male pattern baldness has been stuck in the stone age of trying to crudely suppress androgenic activity without anyone really asking why the AR receptors in the scalp in balding men are acting in a dysfunctional manner.

We have Cots's PGD2 angle, but afaik, PGD2 being overproduced is a downstream effect of dysfunctional androgen activity in the follicle

what has been done so far to attempt to identify why beyond "lol its genes"? I am grossly simplifying for the sake of brevity of course, but all antiandrogen treatments to me seem like trying to perform micro surgery with a shotgun.

 

[That Guy]

Science seems to have asked few questions about it at all, honestly.

Now, we're at the point where the "why" doesn't really matter; you're going to have to be able to grow new hair and put it back on people's heads regardless, so you may as well just focus on that.

 

[Armando Jose]

The Right Questions About male pattern baldness?

IMHO it could be why only certains hairs are focused in comon hairloss? Initially are all healthy and identics. Probably hormones have a role in it, but it is not the real trigger. Think about it: Hormones are operative and functional in childrens (in scalp hair), why they don't suffer from common hair loss? It must have a prior event. ....

 

[resu]

You can believe some cure will happen and still no one will have Androgenetic Alopecia completely figured out.

 

[Armando Jose]

Prevention better than cure.
And in our case, Prevention shall be before cure, Cure is more complicated, the pilosebaceous unit acts with all our biologist system, circukatory, hormonal, immuno, etc issues.

 

[Min0]

you can't even finance such research, people will eat you alive, "f*** you baldies, every penny should go to cancer research", despite the fact that billions are spent on women cosmetic research.

bottom line, men are disposable subhumans and their problems don't matter (even to them, look at all the "just shave it bro" preachers).
our hope is organ regeneration research and accidental findings.

 

[resu]

The Right Questions About male pattern baldness?

IMHO it could be why only certains hairs are focused in comon hairloss? Initially are all healthy and identics. Probably hormones have a role in it, but it is not the real trigger. Think about it: Hormones are operative and functional in childrens (in scalp hair), why they don't suffer from common hair loss? It must have a prior event. ....

Sweat glands are only triggered at a certain age, same with body hair, the follicles are only triggered to grow hair at a certain time, think how hair leg was first, then chest, then back and shoulders, hands next.. then ears when you're old.

With hair loss it appears the same, some follicles are triggered at one point, others at another, or maybe some follicles are more resistant to androgen activity while others are not and they lose all their hair in a diffuse way. Hair loss follows a pattern, hence the name.

 

[Min0]

Baldies still have money, thats what the pharma companies want. Even if nobody else cares about our problems, if enough of us do, i believe we will still get something.

exactly, that's why the "just shave it bro" guys should be sprayed with gazoline and set on fire.

 

[whatevr]

It seems to me so much of drug development for male pattern baldness has been stuck in the stone age of trying to crudely suppress androgenic activity without anyone really asking why the AR receptors in the scalp in balding men are acting in a dysfunctional manner.

We have Cots's PGD2 angle, but afaik, PGD2 being overproduced is a downstream effect of dysfunctional androgen activity in the follicle

what has been done so far to attempt to identify why beyond "lol its genes"? I am grossly simplifying for the sake of brevity of course, but all antiandrogen treatments to me seem like trying to perform micro surgery with a shotgun.

"Lol it's genes" is probaby the most reasonable explanation, and targetting AR is the second most sensible thing to do given the implication of DHT + genes. The thing about genes is we don't even remotely have them all mapped out (the ones which relate to baldness), and the technology to target and silence them is at least 10-15 years away if we're being optimistic. Genetic therapy would fundamentally cure us, in all likelihood.

I'm willing to bet there will be a functional cure far before we know all the why's and how's of alopecia, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

 

[mdmnota]

Genes.. I don't believe it. I would just put bald guy and fullhead in the same room and do all possible f*****g tests on them. And then when the results are different, compare them and fix us.

 

[Armando Jose]

Sweat glands are only triggered at a certain age, same with body hair, the follicles are only triggered to grow hair at a certain time, think how hair leg was first, then chest, then back and shoulders, hands next.. then ears when you're old.

With hair loss it appears the same, some follicles are triggered at one point, others at another, or maybe some follicles are more resistant to androgen activity while others are not and they lose all their hair in a diffuse way. Hair loss follows a pattern, hence the name.

You have very good points, but scalp hair is differentfrom body hair and specialized hairs. Scalp hair has asynchronicity, human being are, among other primates, the unique in this issue.

 

[NewUser]

I think the recent findings of Southwestern medical could be significant. This is by cancer researchers who were studting something else entirely or so they thought. They've idintified a gene and protein in mice that they believe is responsible for both hair growth and pigmentation albeit in mice which share many genes and diseases with humans. It's hopeful. Might not necessarily require gene replacement therapy. Small molecule drugs could be used to affect gene transcription and therefore protein production in cells. Only time will tell.

 

[Armando Jose]

Time will tell, but only a gene and protein responsible for both hair growth and pigmentation? There is a lot of genes implicated in hair cycle.

 

[karankaran]

I believe that a huge issue in medical research is targeted drug/gene delivery. It is the elephant in the room no one wants to address. May be in case of baldness, we will get lucky as localized injections of compounds will help us.

 

[Gone]

The Right Questions About male pattern baldness?

IMHO it could be why only certains hairs are focused in comon hairloss? Initially are all healthy and identics. Probably hormones have a role in it, but it is not the real trigger. Think about it: Hormones are operative and functional in childrens (in scalp hair), why they don't suffer from common hair loss? It must have a prior event. ....

where did you read this? about hormones in children's scalp hair.

 

[coolio]

Any hair treatment with 'genes' in the description is probably decades away from human trials, let alone the market. It's a waste of time to focus on it. There are too many other methods of fixing male pattern baldness that would be perfected before gene-related things are even tackled.

We don't need a perfect genetic fix. We just need a treatment option that works.

 

[ManinBlack]

I think this problem is not unique to baldness. I mean we have known about genes for a while and scientists have been talking about and researching genetic engineering or gene therapy since the 1990s now and in all that time, what have we really accomplished besides growing new hairs on rats or stuff. I mean it seems like even in more well publicized issues like cancer or Alzheimer's, that not much progress has been made despite endless research, fundraisers or awareness marches. I mean it is frustrating, it seems like all the biggest scientific "advances" today are creating newer and newer smartphones and apps and entertainment sh*t, while medical breakthroughs are agonizingly slow. A cure would be nice and I am hoping for one, but honestly at this point I would be happy for any real advancements at all coming in the hairloss industry. It seems like Finasteride and FUE were the last big breakthroughs and everything for the last 15 years has been treatments that have little effects really, with them saying that the next breakthrough is just 5 years away...every 5 years. I am honestly just hoping that Replicel or Shiseido will pull through.

 

[Armando Jose]

where did you read this? about hormones in children's scalp hair.

There is only a few studies regarding scalp sebum in children, most are focused in sebum on forehead or other parts in body excluding scalp (in this areas there is not sebum before puberty, zones without terminal hair). But all women and men with childrens know that young people also have sebum or hair fat as we. BTW sebum or hair fat have androgens in it, and sebaceous gland can synthetize hormones parting from cholesterol

I have detected some studies about it.

Dilutional effect of increased sebaceous gland activity on the proportion of linoleic acid in sebaceous wax esters and in epidermal acylceramides.


Proportions of various straight and branched fatty acid chain types in the sebaceous wax esters of young children


Comedogenicity of human sebum


Unusual Cholesterol esters in the sebum of young children

 

[plisk]

the language used in male pattern baldness is indicative of a problem in the thought process IMO

We frequently talk about androgens and DHT in particular as a boogeyman or pest to be controlled, like wolves preying on your livestock. But in actuality, there is nothing wrong with androgens, it is our follicles that are dysfunctional. The perception of persecution in hair loss discussions is completely backwards, but this is how it is viewed in the research as well: stop androgens instead of fix dysfunctional response to androgen.

IMO until that perception changes, any drug treatment will continue to be little better than current treatments. Every significant antiandrogen has been tried, and the amount of people who get cosmetically significant regrowth is still tellingly few. Literal castration does not cause regrowth either - this seems to go completely unnoticed in hair loss research - Just how well do you really think any antiandrogen is going to work when stopping ALL of the androgens completely does nothing?

Science seems to have asked few questions about it at all, honestly.

Now, we're at the point where the "why" doesn't really matter; you're going to have to be able to grow new hair and put it back on people's heads regardless, so you may as well just focus on that.

I agree thats the most practical option on the horizon, also the most realistic.

None the less, you would hope by 2020, R&D for male pattern baldness would have lept beyond the basic paradigm that was formed in the 70s.

 

[Min0]

the language used in male pattern baldness is indicative of a problem in the thought process IMO

We frequently talk about androgens and DHT in particular as a boogeyman or pest to be controlled, like wolves preying on your livestock. But in actuality, there is nothing wrong with androgens, it is our follicles that are dysfunctional. The perception of persecution in hair loss discussions is completely backwards, but this is how it is viewed in the research as well: stop androgens instead of fix dysfunctional response to androgen.

IMO until that perception changes, any drug treatment will continue to be little better than current treatments. Every significant antiandrogen has been tried, and the amount of people who get cosmetically significant regrowth is still tellingly few. Literal castration does not cause regrowth either - this seems to go completely unnoticed in hair loss research - Just how well do you really think any antiandrogen is going to work when stopping ALL of the androgens completely does nothing?



I agree thats the most practical option on the horizon, also the most realistic.

None the less, you would hope by 2020, R&D for male pattern baldness would have lept beyond the basic paradigm that was formed in the 70s.

also we aren't even sure about wether there is a chain reactions that involves DHT kills the follicle.
that chain can be broken by blocking another element other than DHT.

we look at it like this :
DHT + sensitive follicle = miniaturisation
but it may be
DHT + X + sensitive follicle = miniaturisation
X can be more than one thing.

so we can genetically engineere unsensitive follicles or we can simply block X and not DHT.