For years, the medical community has been researching hair loss – male pattern baldness in men and women, the various types of alopecia, and other type of hair loss – to figure out a way to combat this issue with hair regrowth. There have always been a lot of products that claim to regrow hair, and a common procedure for men was to take hair from another part of the body and transplant the hair follicles.
Recently, however, it looks like scientists have made some progress with a solution that’s much more ideal for people who live with alopecia. That solution is finding a way to stimulate actual hair follicle growth so that hair can grow back naturally.
The study, carried out by researchers at Columbia University in NYC and the University of Durham tested a new way of using cloned cells grafted into human skin to regrow hair. In five cases out of the seven that were tested, hair was able to grow naturally without a transplant. The head researcher for the study, Angela Christiano, suffers from alopecia areata herself, so she has an interesting take on the study. “This [is] an advancement in using regenerative medicine – or using the body’s own cells to restore their hair.”
What does this mean for the alopecia and hair loss community? This could help doctors treat hair loss in a new way and make it possible to almost reverse the effects of alopecia and male pattern baldness.
While this is a great start for finding ways to cure alopecia, the researchers mentioned that another application for the success of future studies of this technique would be to help grow more hair follicles overall for hair transplants for women.
Although there’s still a few obstacles to overcome and more tests to run, the success of being able to actually grow hair from cells is a huge achievement and it’s exciting to see what types of advancements will be made over the next few years.
