Accidental hair growth with PGE1 is not surprising. Increased blood flow may result in thicker hair. And I agree about it being very questionable that DGLA or equol alone do not work at all. I really think that they are saying that as a deterrent and I don't really believe it. Do they work better together? Sure, why not. But they should work to some degree on their own.
The use of liposomes is interesting. A bunch of people say that they found selective deposition of drugs into the hair follicle when a liposomal vehicle was used.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923181196005579
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10611869808995860
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02631046?LI=true
But on the other hand, if you don't care about systemic effects, you should be able to "nuke" your scalp with drugs such that enough of the drug just goes everywhere.
The addition of equol is interesting. A bunch of guys say that it binds selectively to DHT and that it is an estrogen receptor β agonist and that it is well tolerated in people.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/132/12/3577.short
https://academic.oup.com/biolreprod.../Equol-Is-a-Novel-Anti-Androgen-that-Inhibits
https://rbej.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1477-7827-9-4
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/5/1072.short
But on the other hand, most of the literature on equol and DHT was written by the same 5 guys (who won't call or email me back :\ ) and they have licensed their patent (
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100076071A1/en?q=equol) to NuSkin (source:
https://news.byu.edu/news/five-coolest-most-successful-byu-inventions-year).
But if you have any hands left, on the next hand, NuSkin has its headquarters in Provo, Utah, the same town as Brigham Young University, so it makes some sense I guess that the people who did the equol work walk down the street and license it to NuSkin, who use it in an anti-aging cream that they claim has received very positive feedback from customers.
But on the next, next hand, NuSkin is a multilevel marketing company (which is always a great sign), co-founded by Steve Lund (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Lund), who also is likely related to one of the researchers who appears on most of the equol work, Trent Lund (which is always a great sign). Also Jason Chaffetz worked at NuSkin for like a decade before becoming a politician and I f*****g hate the guy so there's the best evidence against equol right there, ladies and gentlemen.
So I think it COULD be a dud, but it's probably not a scam....unless someone wants to tell me about Fidia's multilevel marketing enterprise.