Technorati: hair loss, hair loss treatment
There is a hope for those who are suffering from male-pattern and female-pattern baldness. You may no longer need to wear wigs or feel embarrassed about your balding condition. New developments in medicine suggest a potential cure for hair loss.
A team of researchers in Pennsylvania say it is possible to regenerate damaged hair follicles. They made this conclusion after they successfully created new hair cells in mice.
The researchers said that hair growth can actually be encouraged using a single gene. Using pairs of identical twins, the study assessed the efficacy of dutasteride - an enzyme inhibitor. Dutasteride is used as a means of reducing hair loss and encouraging new growth. Researchers found it to be an effective means of combating baldness.
In the study, one of each pair of twins was given 0.5mg/day of the medication. The other one receives a placebo. The results were monitored for over a year. After the 6th and 12th month, researches have noticed that hair growth has actively improved in twins using dutasteride. Furthermore, the rate of growth in the dutasteride group increased between the 6 and 12-month evaluations. As expected, those in the placebo group suffered from hair loss steadily.
The study has a great potential for solving the problem of hair loss especially on the cases of male-pattern baldness and female-pattern baldness. Further investigations are necessary in order to prove effectiveness of the results in humans.