Health
Related: About this forumHair loss reversed in alopecia areata sufferers (BBC)
By Smitha Mundasad
Health reporter, BBC News
Scientists have completely reversed hair loss in three people by giving them a drug normally used to treat bone marrow disorders.
The patients had alopecia areata - a condition that can cause severe, patchy baldness that is difficult to treat.
But after five months of taking the medication ruxolitinib, all three saw total hair re-growth.
The findings from Columbia University Medical Center are published in the journal Nature Medicine.
'Devastating disease'
Alopecia areata affects around two in every 1,000 people in the UK and is thought to be caused by the immune system attacking hair follicles.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28834058
Any time an auto-immune disorder yields to treatment, it's big news ... implies hope for other such disorders.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)...but do they take it like penicillin, a course of it and they're "cured," or do they take it for the rest of their life, assuming they want to keep growing hair?
It would be great if it's a real cure and not a treatment for a condition that is chronic.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)Lots of questions, the first and perhaps most important one being, why did they decide to give that particular drug to those particular people with alopecia? What kinds of side effects are there? When the drug is discontinued does the hair maintain?
I have two sons with alopecia areata, and both have the most extreme from, which is alopecia areata universalis. That last word can be taken to mean the entire universe of hair has been lost. Both sons have no hair whatsoever, no eyebrows, eyelashes, body hair, nothing. Neither son has ever had to shave, as it happens. The oldest went bald at age four, the younger at age 10. They are now 27 and 31, so I've been paying attention to all things hair related for over a quarter century now.
One thing that is often forgotten in the search for a miracle cure for this disorder is that one of the truly weird and inexplicable things is that someone with alopecia can regrow all that hair at any time and for no apparent cause. I used to go to the conferences, and one year someone would be totally bald, the next with a full head of hair. Or one time with lots of bald patches, and a few years later no hair at all. And the next year, hair. I often tell people that any pattern of hair loss and growth (or regrowth) you can possibly imagine has happened to someone with alopecia.
It would be nice if a real cure were to be discovered, and it's something that does nothing other than get the hair to grow. Both of my sons assure me that they have no interest in ever having hair, so they'd turn down the cure, but certainly many would embrace it.