mgdpublic said:
I don't get it. That report basically said that minoxidil worked a bit faster and that finasteride was just slightly better overall, but if you look at the chart, minoxidil after 2 years showed a 20% increase in hair count while finasteride showed close to 90%. How can that be similar??
Congratulations on being the first one on this site to notice that little discrepancy! :lol:
There is clearly an error of some sort in that graph. Back on September 22, I sent the following email to Dr. Kumar:
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Dear Dr. Kumar:
I read with a great deal of interest your article in the Archives of Dermatology on your comparison of oral finasteride and topical minoxidil for androgenetic alopecia. However, I'm deeply puzzled by the data presented in the text of your article, compared to the information in the graph. You stated that the baseline total hair count for the finasteride group was 60.9 hairs, and that the increase after 12 months was 17.7 hairs. That would be an increase of 17.7 / 60.9 = 29%, and yet the graph shows an increase of over 90% (the Y-axis of the graph is plainly labeled: "% Increase in Hair Count"). Similarly, the total hair count increase for the minoxidil group would appear to be 9.6 / 64.8 = 14.8%, and yet the graph shows an increase of close to 30% for that parameter. Are there errors in the reported numbers, or is the graph itself in error?
I'd really appreciate it if you could spare some of your valuable time to comment on these discrepancies, Dr. Kumar! Thank you so much!
Bryan Shelton
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And just a few days ago I got the following response back from Dr. Saraswat (I'm leaving out some of his email, just quoting from some of the "meat" of what he says...I hope he won't mind too much):
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Thank you for your interest in our paper on treatment of androgenetic alopecia. I'm not sure why the graph has caused such a confusion, since I myself have not yet received the reprints of the paper and am not sure how accurately it had been reproduced.
As it should appear, the graph should be entitled "Mean±SEM increase in total and thick hair counts in the two groups" and should have four data lines, two (the flatter ones) reflecting total hair count in both groups and two ( the taller ones) for only thick hair counts in both groups. You are referring to the data lines pertaining to the increase in thick hair count which did increase quite a lot at 12 months ( baseline- 25.1 for finasteride, 26.9 for minoxidil; increase at 12 months- 24.4 and 19.4
respectively).
The text you are referring to is about theb two lower data lines, which show the % increase in total hair count. This was much lower, owing to the higher baseline values.
Probably the confusion has arisen due to the severe shortening of a study- length paper into the correspondence format !! I had to leave out considerable amounts of data and explanatory text.
If you have any more queries, I will be very ahppy to clear them up for you.
Sincerely yours
Abir Saraswat, MD
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It's clear that somebody goofed-up the graph, and got those data lines mis-labeled. The two lines at the top are apparently supposed to be the thick haircount lines for both finasteride and minoxidil (respectively), while the two lines at the bottom are the thin haircount lines for finasteride and minoxidil (respectively). The way they're labeled right now in that study is incorrect, and makes it look like finasteride BLOWS AWAY minoxidil, which is definitely not the case! :twisted:
I'll be writing back to Dr. Saraswat to help clear that up.
Bryan
