Potential New Cure Found For Baldness (bbc.com)

A potential new cure for baldness has been discovered using a drug originally intended to treat osteoporosis. BBC reports: Researchers found the drug had a dramatic effect on hair follicles in the lab, stimulating them to grow. It contains a compound which targets a protein that acts as a brake on hair growth and plays a role in baldness. Project leader Dr Nathan Hawkshaw told the BBC a clinical trial would be needed to see if the treatment was effective and safe in people. Only two drugs are currently available to treat balding (androgenetic alopecia): minoxidil, for men and women, and finasteride, for men only. Neither is available on the NHS, the national healthcare system for England, and both have side-effects and are not always very effective, so patients often resort to hair transplantation surgery instead.

Comments

I wonder...

[Oswald McWeany]

I wonder how much one will have toupee for this.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much one will have toupee for this.

More than a hair more than you can afford, you might wig out when you see the price.

Re:I wonder...

[Snufu]

It will be priced so that most people with at least mullet over.

Re:I wonder...

[bgarcia]

To find out, you mustache how much it costs.

I have my own cure

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s called âoeshaving my headâ.

Beats the hell out of a bad combover!

Re:I have my own cure

[HornWumpus]

'Bad combover' is redundant.

Don't start hair transplants, then lose your income.

I interviewed a dude. Head looked like he had an Island of hair clumps in a lagoon of bald.

He apparently started the hair transplant thing, then must have given them up as too expensive. He should have shaved his head, cause what he had was just ridiculous.

I almost wanted to hire him, but no, he was just obviously useless.

Re:I have my own cure

[swb]

I have a full head of hair and I got into super short hair about 20 years ago and eventually said fuck it and shaved my head.

I love it and would never go back. My male friends with baldness problems have actually told me they're kind of mad that I have hair and I shave it.

It is literally 5 minutes every other day to keep it shaved.

You do have to pay attention and wear some cover in the sun, I sunburned my head ONCE and that was all it took to learn that lesson.

When it's super hot out you also get hotter and sweatier. Hair absorbs sweat and provides some kind of evaporation cooling.

Re:I have my own cure

[fluffernutter]

Bill Cosby is one step ahead of you.

cyclosporine A - transplant rejection drug

[Hadlock]

Article says it is "cyclosporine A" which is designed to prevent your body from attacking transplanted organs. That is a pretty serious drug, suppressing your immune system to the point that it mostly ignores giant blobs of foreign meat in your body. I'm sure the wikipedia article will get more fleshed out but the list of side effects sound about as severe as you could imagine.
 
I'm guessing that this is effective in extremely low doses? All it needs to do is attack a specific protein, I believe.

Re:cyclosporine A - transplant rejection drug

[starless]

Article says it is "cyclosporine A" which is designed to prevent your body from attacking transplanted organs. That is a pretty serious drug, suppressing your immune system to the point that it mostly ignores giant blobs of foreign meat in your body.

From the article:

But because of its side effects, CsA was unsuitable as a baldness treatment.

The team went on to look for another agent that targeted SFRP1 and found that WAY-316606 was even better at suppressing the protein.

Also, perhaps it's applied topically rather than ingested?

Somewhere in a fan-fiction...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lex Luther was in a pitched battle with a man in a yellow jumpsuit and red gloves. Robot parts and broken walls littered everywhere.

Suddenly, both men stop. They each take a sneaky glance as their phones.

Luther: "THIS MUST STOP."

Saitama: "I ... yeah, I think you've learned your... gotta go bye."

They both leave deep impact marks in the metal floor as they go for opposite exits.

Re:"Side effects"

[Anonymous Coward]

Side effects may include:

Job promotions, new interest from women, increased social activity, uncontrollable smiling at parties, wind blown hair in the face, hair blowing in the wind, fingers getting caught in hair, sudden urges to flip your head like a stallion and wave thick locks of hair around in slow motion.

Among others...

Re:Yeah

[PrimaryConsult]

That's actually a potential side effect for Finasteride: Finasteride Side Effects. It's also a drug used (in higher doses) for male to female transition.

Re:On the other hand

[K. S. Kyosuke]

What about people who don't have laser hair?

Re:What if it only work on women?

[MachineShedFred]

You missed the part where they started out trying to find a better treatment for Osteoporosis, which is more common in women, who also start out with less bone mass and have less tolerance for losing it.

But good job knocking the ever-living shit out of a straw man and projecting gender-malice where it probably doesn't exist. They didn't find a treatment for Osteoporosis, but in the process they may have found something therapeutic for another condition - are they supposed to just throw that one back?

What an odd opinion to take.

Next up the cure for Blue eyes

[goombah99]

Baldness isn't a disease. One does not cure baldness anymore that one cures blue eyes or cure you for not being an olympic athlete. You are just taking drugs to change something about yourself. It's like taking steroids to change your muscles.