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Gene Research Gives Hope of Reversing Baldness
Hair loss in humans might not be irreversible, suggest scientists who have helped create new hair cells on the skin of mice. It was thought hair follicles, once damaged, could never be replaced. A University of Pennsylvania team, writing in the journal Nature, say hair growth can actually be encouraged using a single gene.
i'm not nearly as distressed by the hair i'm losing as much as by the hair that seems to grow more and more rapidly where i don't want it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Get a hair cut you cheese eating freeloaders!
Getting rid of excess hair is easy and relatively cheap. A girlfriend and I had planned on getting it done - her for her legs and me for my back. Adding hair back to the crown of my head (getting close to the point I'm going to have the chop off the several feet of hair I have to avoid having the "loser living in his mom's basement" skull-crown look) is significantly more painful and costly. The only real treatments long-term now involve grafts or artificial implants.
Advanced hair ... yeah, yeah.
Exciting for some....
However, the next generation of this process could feasibly be new limbs or new organs ... sign me up.
Erectile dysfunction? Check!
Baldness? Check!
Cancer? Whassat?
There's still hope for me! \o/
... keep shaving my head to finish what I thought Nature started? You mean I might have the full head of hair I never had? Huzzah! I eagerly look forward to squandering money on hair tonic and barbers!
I want wnt!
(Sorry, you'll have to RTFA to get that joke...)
The self-indulgent preoccupation with male pattern baldness couldn't be more banal.
reverses baldness, so what is the big deal?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Damn there goes the one good reason for not having the baldness gene. I won't be able to spin around the nursing home in my supped up wheelchair laughing and pointing and those inferior baldies! "Ha Ha" - Nelson
That means I will also be on equal footing when it comes to attract those cute blue rinses.
Stupid research give me back my advantages!!
Genetic research should focus on topics with higher priority for the mankind.
This very one seems triggered by some company that has sold the snake oil for the hair regrowth!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
No thanks, that's what makes me a sex machine!
Task Mangler
to baldly go where no man has gone before!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
This could be great news for those of us who took accutane and now have thinning hair. Being in your 20s and having thinning hair is a pain in the ass.
Eastern European Women never lose hair anywhere, you insensitive clod!
The clock sure was ticking on the impending baldness epidemic...
Thank god for modern medicine. Quick, to marketing!
Someone wake me when they run out of money for AIDS/cancer/superbugs.
I'll be the guy with the nice head of hair who's dying of AIDS/cancer/superbugs.
Ok, I'm not a scientist. How exactly we *reverse* baldness (notice the term) in grown people, by finding the *gene* responsible.
Do we take a magical serum that alters our DNA or something? You know, like in movies, where if an alien bites you, you don't just die from a bad infection or anything, oh no. You instead turn into a hybrid, 'cause, you see, the alien DNA infected you.
Has some latest research links.
a rch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldness#Latest_rese
They found some genes from Russians. Now they need to work on the drugs. Said something about enzymes being key.
Am I the only one that doesn't have a problem about going bald? Or having some deep complex about body hair in general?
It's not hair or lack of it that makes people look good or bad. You tend to lose it during your early middle age, and frankly it's not the hair situation which makes you look over the hill. If you're like most Western guys it's things like your hanging belly, heavy jowls and plushy, coarse, unkempt complexion that makes you look old and pathetic, not the follicle density of your skull top. You could have a mane big enough to play in a hair band and you'd still look old and pathetic.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
It reads like going bald is a bad thing. It's normal, it's natural. Ditto going grey, getting wrinkles and whatever else age brings. Why are we so obsessed with looking like a lie? It's not healthy.
And no, I'm not bald (yet) but going that way but there's no way I'm fighting it. Heck, it even has plus points - makes washing your hair and worrying about what style to keep it in a whole lot simpler - just razz it all off with a grade 2 every couple of weeks.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
So we got viagra to keep people up and we'll soon have $name_to_add_to_spamfilter to cure the loss of hair, but still no reliable cure for cancer and let's not talk about AIDS.
But why?
Money, people. Simply and plainly, money.
Imagine you found a cure for AIDS. A cure. Not some half-assed treatment like we do now (though, treating something is more profitable than curing... but I ramble). What would immediately happen? The WHO would start jumping to your neck and throttle you 'til you let that (presumably) ass expensive cure out for "free", because the area most affected by AIDS is also the one with the least dough to pay for it. DARE to not give that cure away for free there and you'll be picketed for the rest of your existance, which could be rather short.
Would you invest in a cure for AIDS? I won't, if I was Sandoz or Roche.
A cure for baldness on the other hand, you can sell for whatever insane sum you want. It's not like people need hair to survive, it's not life threatening to shine like Kojak. But people WANT hair. And a lot of them would pay any price to get their "good looks" back.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Tom Jones gene by any chance?
i've traveled europe, and your wrong unless your thing is haggard chain smokers who wear too much makeup and have hairy pits and boxes.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Funny thing though. In this week's Nature there is this article where American scientists speculate on an alternative method to promote de novo follicle growth [in mice] via... grazing of the scalp.
I quote the scoop from the New Scientist's entry:
Could a graze on the head help cure baldness? Biologists had thought that once mammals lose their hair follicles, they are gone forever. Now George Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his colleagues have shown that adult mice can regenerate follicles when their skin is wounded.
The team cut out a square centimetre of skin from the backs of mice two weeks after their hair follicles had formed. After 14 to 19 days the wounds had closed and formed new. When the researchers added Wnt proteins - signalling molecules usually involved in embryonic development - the number of follicles doubled and the skin healed with less scarring. This suggests that wound healing may trigger an embryonic state in skin, says Cotsarelis. Surprisingly, the new follicles originate from stem cells that are not usually involved in creating hair follicles.
Cotsarelis hopes the findings could lead to new therapies for baldness. "The idea would be to disrupt the skin to trigger the embryonic pathways, and then come in with the Wnt proteins," he says.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
They're hot when they're young, but time wounds all heels -- they don't look so great when they weigh 200#.
$META_SIG_JOKE
Anyone wondering if corperate interests drive research, I give you this. Nothing on cancer, nothing on aids, or any other serious issue. No baldness is what we really need to work on. After all what good is that viagra, if your not getting laid. This not my sci-fi vision of genetic engineering. If they're not going to help, the least they could do is give me my 2-headed bobcat with laser eyes.
I'm still 0 out of 100 somethin' and counting.
"Get off the cross - we need the wood" - Tori Amos
I wonder what Nike would pay me to grow a nice thick swish on my back for summer.
Today's bald joke: The best thing about being bald is... when her folks come home, all you have to do is straighten your tie.
My Blog | Badsh
Getting some is getting some isn't it?
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
How those in the IT industry tend to lose more hair earlier than those who don't? I look at the people who work outdoors all day and generally they have healthy heads of hair (I'm not just talking Hispanics here, who are genetically less likely to experience hair loss). But those who sit in front of monitors all day seem to say byebye to their follicles quite early.
Makes you wonder what other ailments techies will find themselves with down the road (along with that tumor by their preferred ear for holding your cell phone up to).
At least techies generally make enough $ to afford what will undoubtedly be this overpriced treatment, should it ever emerge (a friend of a friend was on the team that developed Propecia, you should see the houses and cars he has...).
Why should we care about this?
It's not as if slashdotters are over 40 or anything! Leave this to the wrinkleys with one foot in the grave.
Why don't they all just sod off and die somewhere? We're still contributing to the planet.
And if they smell bad it's a plus.
But it have to be ordered by the pizza delivery guy.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
"Sour grapes", timmarhy? Or is it your g.f. o.s. ?
Am I the only one who first read this as "Google Research Gives Hope of Reversing Baldness"? :)
i've traveled europe,
Want to detail where in Eastern Europe you've been? Bulgaria? Romania? Estonia?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I was expecting many more funny comments in this post.. Especially since it deals with baldness (a very good topic for jokes)
How about...
"We're all born with the same amount of hormones. If you want to use yours for growing hair, that's your business."
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Both pathways are cancer-related and the first one is fairly complex, so there will be (hopefully) a lot of (lengthy) research intended to find out possible side effects.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That's great news! Now all you geeks can grow long, flowing manes like your god RMS instead of your sad Friar Tuck ponytail hairdos.
...like this.
Hair dressers and barbershops will now have more customers....
It would seem that you are
Have numbers? I'm just curious. I've noticed nothing of the sort, and it occurs to me that the physical environments most techies have (desktop box, flatscreen monitor, etc.) don't differ significantly from those of the typical accountant / lawyer. If there is a difference, to where could it be traced? Thought patterns?
To me, it appears to be *very* random. I haven't been able to tie it to anything. (Aside: Ask ten women to choose either hair or a 6-pack of abs. I guarantee 9 of 10 will choose the 6-pack. As someone else noted here, overall physical conditioning is more important to one's appearance.)
At the risk of tired stereotyping, I've noticed an increased incidence of obesity and lack of sun exposure in techies relative to the general population.
Hi:
Somewhere decisions were being made at Pfizer a few years ago: 'We have a finite research budget, do we cure cancer or work on an erection pill?' And we know how the middle-aged men around the boardroom table voted. I for one, am glad that the thick around the middle, balding white guys are in pharma boardrooms as they have my interests at heart!
Also, doesn't hair help protect again cancer to some extent? A bald head may be getting a bit more in the way of UV rays and sunburn than a fully haired one.
If they can figure out how to stop hair from growing on one's back, ears, and nose, that will be where the smart money goes...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Ok, well, if that's the only way, I guess having short, white, mouse hair instead of my natural hair will have to do. :-D translated : (^_^)
This finally has convinced me that there should be no more obstacles to genetic research!
You can fill my garden with modified man eating plants, you can kill my neighbours with terrible designer diseases, I don't care as long as you can give me back my hair!
It has been 45 years since the first successful salvo, aiding women in the fight against small breast antipathy, was fired - thank you Cronin and Gerow! 16 years since coke-bottle spectacles could be removed allowing Slashdot readers to look less-nerdy.
What of the poor, demasculinized baldies?
In the past fifty years they've been given tonics, wigs, a classy British actor, plugs, and transplantations. None of which truly offer salvation to the downtrodden. Why are women and those with poor vision helped with silicon stress-balls and glorified laser pens - both of which are fun to play with - while those with male pattern baldness are stuck with Miracle-Gro and doll's hair? If it takes our best scientific minds to right this injustice, so be it!
I didn't want to leave this blank.
I've been taking the little pink pills for 8 years. When I started, I had a serious receeding hairline and was very thin up top. Now I have a full head of hair and no sign of any baldness. The pills aren't cheap though. They cost me about $1.50 (US) each and I take one every day.
I never really thought about taking sandpaper or a wood file to my head before this but having read the article it should be nicer than the turtlewax thing.
At first I read that as "Badness".. and it kinda freaks me out that I was not surprised at all :/
I think you mean Rogene.
I always found it somewhat disheartening that, in the futuristic era of Star Trek, we'll apparently be able to travel faster than light (warp engines), consider gravity itself to be little more than a house-hold utility (which miraculously stays on even when ship has been destroyed for decades), synthesize food in seconds in our bedrooms, create artificial reality so real it needs safety settings (and doesn't even need some poor bastard to mop up after VR's involving super-models), create lasers that not only blow up ships, but can actually be heard (Vzzzom!) in the vaccum of space, cure anything with a hypospray, etc, etc, etc...
but Warf and Pickard are both still as bald as plucked chickens.
A more realistic techno-topia would probably involve everyone walking around looking like movie-stars (with comically large sex organs for the guys), and 15 year waiting list for the holodeck. Plus, I'm pretty sure that there'd be *at least* one Mexican somewhere.
laser hair removal, at least in western europe its available everywhere, and its permanent (well actually I don't think its been around for more than a couple of decades, but so far no one reported their hair growing back)
I for one welcome our newly hairy overlords!
I am not an animal! I am something worse!
...where all the 14-year-old girls try to look 25.
This is some great news. I knew this was coming. I have been telling people to wait for this, but they all thought I was crazy. Nope, not crazy, just a little a head in my prediction. I love Biotech. It is GREAT! I am not bald yet, but it is heading that way. I hope they hurry this up and have it paid for by my insurance. Hell, if they pay for Viagra for oldsters, then they can pay for Gene Therapy for guys like me.
I love how they always say "just a single gene" in articles like this. Yes a single gene, in millions upon millions of cell copies. Not so simple sounding a fix anymore, at least not with gene therapy's current track record.
I though it was in Estonia where things got hairy recently...
Have you spent ANY TIME AT ALL in Prague or Budapest?
I remember walking down the street in Budapest and every other woman was drop-dead gorgeous. Like supermodel-quality.
There's a reason why all the women in the "Pink Velvet" pornos are Hungarian.