For centuries people have strived/striven/strove to find a cure for male pattern baldness. Snake-oil merchants have long sold tinctures, balms, creams and salves all claiming to reverse the harrowing shedding of hair that up to 50% of men over the age of 50 will experience, their success driven by people's desperation for a cure to exist. People will go to extraordinarily lengths to try abate the inexorable revealing of their scalp, old wives tales abound for spurious treatments. I once knew a man who swore that he was able to combat hair loss by burying thirty printed headshots of Tom Selleck under a sycamore tree every full moon; my friend heard tell of an uncle who insisted that if you only ever slept on futons you would never lose a shred of hair - a point which, despite circumstances after a costly divorce forcing him to test, proved entirely incorrect; there was also a man I knew who ran a pub who said that if you ate forty chicken nuggets a day you would always have thick and lustrous hair - his funeral, after he died at the age of 39 from complications brought about by chronic obesity, was one of the most moving I've had the privilege of attending.
All of this is to say that we no longer need to put our faith in quacks and heresay as research by a group of British scientists has lead to the realisation that a drug, originally used to treat osteoporosis can be refined to help stimulate and maintain hair growth.
There are at the moment two drugs on the market, minoxidil and finasteride, used to treat the most common form of male pattern baldness, however, both of these result in significant side-effect and their effectiveness is patchy at best.
A team of researchers at the University of Manchester were inspired by a cancer drug which had the unfortunate side-effect of prompting unwarranted hair growth. After assessing what mechanisms within the drug prompted this to happen, they discovered that it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of a protein called SFPR1, which is responsible for inhibiting the growth of hair follicles.
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However, due to the drastic side-effects associated with such a strong cancer drug, the researchers sought to find another drug that impacted the protein SFPR1 in a similar way. They discovered that a drug, that had been designed to treat osteoporosis was three time more effective at suppressing the protein, leading to "a significant increase in hair growth after two days". The tests, conducted on hair samples donated by patients suffering from male pattern baldness, showed the efficacy of the drug, leading to the belief that the drug, pending tests could be successfully marketed as an effective means to combat, and reverse, male pattern baldness.
H/T: Independent.ie
