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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?
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.
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." ---
If people were just as kind and fair to the beautiful as to the ugly, then I might agree with you.
But they are not.
Eastern European Women never lose hair anywhere, you insensitive clod!
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.
Actually, it doesn't.
If you're lucky, Rogaine (minoxidil) will help you keep the hair you have, and maybe grow a little hair back (not to mention, grow hair -on- your back, because the drug is absorbed systemically).
It also tends to work only on your bald spot. Receding hairlines do not suddenly un-recede (proceed?).
Also, what grows back tends to be a thin and sickly kind of hair. That is because, at the cellular level, baldness is actually an inflammatory condition, and while Rogaine addresses the symptoms of arrested hair growth, it does nothing to cure the underlying disease process, for which no effective treatment exists currently.
In a nutshell, Rogaine tricks dying hair follicles into sputtering out a little more mane, but they're still dying at the root.
And (the best part), if it works at all, it's good only as long as you use it religiously. Lapse, and what hair you were maintaining with the drug, promptly falls out within a few months.
The follicle inflammatory response in baldness seems to be triggered by genetic sensitivity to a metabolite of male hormones (androgens). The other drug you've probably heard about, Propecia, attempts to block these sensitive androgen receptors, whose activation by the metabolite precipitates the inflammation. But it too is imperfect and rife with the potential for sexual side effects, no matter what the literature says.
Rogaine, like so many other medicines, is a crude, high-cost, brute-force fix to a complex, genetically predisposed condition, so perhaps a genetic fix is the best hope.
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.
Clearly medical research as a whole is irrelevant until we solve world hunger; spaceships, cars, and the internet are even more irrelevant. Progress is progress, how do you know that their research into this gene won't help cancer down the road?
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Insightful? My hiney!
Aren't scientists allowed to work on projects of lesser importance until all important problems are solved? If not, the ultimate consequence would be that we compile a list of all problems, sort them and don't start working on number 2 until we've solved number 1.
Secondly it is not as if nothing has been accomplished in cancer research. In the begining of the 20th century having cancer meant a certain death, these days you have a chance depending on the kind of cancer and how far it has progessed. Let's face it, cancer is hard to cure.
An finally you (and others in this thread) seem to think that baldness and erectily dysfunctions are minor problems. Having a problem like that can have a severe inpact on your chances of reproducing so I'd say they're no minor issues.
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"
I'm still 0 out of 100 somethin' and counting.
"Get off the cross - we need the wood" - Tori Amos
Yes! I am cured! \õ/
You are funny. First, death is normal and natural, but only the mentally infirm, religious zealot, or deluded refuse to think it's a bad thing.
Second, nothing says "obsessed with looking like a lie" more than "razz[ing] it all off with a grade 2 every couple of weeks".
Third, like it or not, people in modern western culture embrace the styling, coloring, cut, and decoration of hair as a significant expression of one's individuality, identity, or alliance with others. It's something of a tradition amongst homo sapien societies, dating back at least a few millenia, if not a few hundred. It's also normal and natural, by the way, to feel really f-ing pissed off when you are involuntarily deprived of participating in such a tradition.
But hey -- maybe you are consistently rude. If so, don't waste your time with baldies -- I hear there's a bunch of radical mastectomy survivors wearing falsies. Talk about an easy target, eh? Go get 'em, tiger!
Oh I'm dreadfully sorry your mighty intellect is bored by the trivial concerns of millions. Fact is, many men are enormously bothered by going bald. It's something that affects their job prospects, their sex lives and much more. There are many, many more important things in the world of course, but then we have people like you to wrestle with infinitely more worthy thoughts.
In fact, next time you need to point out to us just how trivial our concerns are, do me a favour. Don't indulge us.
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.
Instead of focusing so much on baldness and erectile dysfunction, shouldn't we have our scientists dealing with the decreasing IQ problem? Just think of where we could end up 500 years!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.