1) My pet theory is that ALL BALDNESS subtypes are auto-immune disease responses.
I agree.
As such, could one of the treatments be immunotherapy with the causative triggers?
The problem is: Yes, it
could, but nobody has looked into this and we lack the facilities to do that ourselves.
2) I have severe seasonal allergies (mold) and oddly enough my male pattern baldness kicked in after my first year of immunotherapy.
In this case, I'd say coincidence. Let me guess, immunotherapy between 17 and 21?
3) I believe DHT is one of the factors, but not the smoking gun it has been believed to be. This explains to me, why there are varying degrees of efficacy with Propecia.
As I stated a couple of times, DHT is not the cuplrit, but only the trigger. DHT by itself is not harmful, as proven by studies where hair follicles from people not suffering from Androgenetic Alopecia were exposed to high DHT concentrations, but nothing happened. In contrast, follicles from people with Androgenetic Alopecia reacted to DHT. Thus, it DHT cannot be the cuplrit per se, it is a wrongful reaction of our bodies.
4) Once the factors are identified, I believe treating and reversing baldness will be extremely easy. I have no scientific basis for this, just pure optimism!
Don't wanna curb it, but unfortunately there are a few things which - in my opinion - make regrowth very difficult:
a) fibrosis of bald areas, which makes it very hard for follicles to do their job, and even if they manage to produce new hair, the hair has a tough time getting to the surface, thus clogging the follicle
b) destruction of brown adipose tissue in bald areas, depriving follicles of nutrients and platelets
c) Even though Follica apparently succeeds to perform follicle neogenesis now, a) and b) as problems still persist
@marku: I don't know if it applies to our case at all. The way this works is similar to one of the interpretations of minoxidil (minoxidil extending the anagen phase). The problem is: Even when the anagen phase is extended, the follicle will take damage from the male pattern baldness process nonetheless. It will produce (and keep) hair longer, but eventually will fail to produce any new hair due to miniaturization of the follicle, which will occur nonetheless. If my understanding is correct, this will not make balding actually slow down (e.g., divide the "balding speed" by a certain factor, slowing down the whole process), but only delay it by a constant factor. This is only speculation though, but makes sense, since this only seems to extend the anagen phase, but does nothing to preserve the follicle itself.
