Can not find any data on minoxidil after 3 months. So, where did you get your data and numbers?
Check below and you'll see it hovers around ~30%. Do google searches for the studies. I'd personally put minoxidil at ~20% average, because I account for possible bias in the studies and some studies show a bit lower numbers than the graphs of the studies that are below. But like Resu said many people don't react to minoxidil, most probably because of the lack of sulfotransferase activity. So one must understand that this average would be way better if more people would respond to the medication. So people are actually searching for compounds to upregulate sulfotransferase activity to possibly enhance minoxidil response;
This would suggest that there may be a continuum of minoxidil response directly proportional to sulfotransferase activity in the hair follicle. Extending this logic, this finding implies that upregulation of sulfotransferase could potentiallybe an effective adjunctive therapy to topical minoxidil. Many compounds have been reported to upregulate sulfotransferases in the liver (13,14). We are now investigating the effect of novel compounds on sulfotransferase activity in the scalp.
And, yes people who respond well are actually well above 30% with minoxidil easy. One has to only look at the pictures of good minoxidil responders and see a very good cosmetic change in a time span of already 3 months. It's just that a small percentage of people actually respond well and even a smaller percentage is really lucky to get the (major) cosmetic difference.
If we take all of this SM still is half as good as minoxidil in the same time span. So it will have to perform twice as good to match minoxidil. SM won't maintain your hair either, that's a big joke. Also people make it that it might be great to add to the arsenal. But are people really this naive? What do people think? That a company will proceed to commercialize a treatment, which is around the same as minoxidil just because you want to add it to your "arsenal"? Come on man. Companies don't give a sh*t about you. It's all about profit and ROI%. Most people wouldn't even give a sh*t about putting multiple topicals on their scalp each day either.
A compound that can't get some sort of significant advantage against current treatments simply won't reach the market. Allergan is a beast of a pharmaceutical company and bimatoprost performed around the same as minoxidil given their last clinical trial. Guess what they do? Well they go back to the drawing board. They will probably give it one more shot. But if they still won't outperform minoxidil they will simply drop the treatment, it's that simple.
SM seems to simply shift the hair follicle cycle. A 10% increase could simply be just anagen initiation in healthy telogen hair follicles. Like I said previously telogen hair follicles are very sensitive to environmental stimuli and b-catenin (WNT) is the "point of no return" prior to anagen initiation. SM won't probably do **** on bald temples for example where the goal is to actually to revive unhealthy miniaturized hair follicles.
I might be wrong on a longer time frame, but I'm highly sure this won't do any better than minoxidil even on a longer time frame. I'd love to be really excited for a treatment too, cause this is getting really old now. But we'll see, waiting time again I guess.....:whistle: