Researchers in Spain believe they have found a way to stimulate hair growth. By using our body’s immune defence to stimulate stem cells in the surrounding skin. Can stem cells be the answer or a cure to hair loss?
Scientists in a recent press release claim to have found a way. Certain white blood cells, macrophages, to reinvigorate hair follicles. Although macrophages are cells from the immune system. Which mainly help to fight infection and wound repair. It also seems that they play a role in activating the skin’s stem cells.
The team led by Dr Mirna Perex-Moreno succeeded in getting the macrophages to activate the stem cells in hair follicles on non-inflamed skin. Although the study was carried out in mice, Dr. Mirna Perex-Moreno and her team are confident that similar results can be repeated in human subjects.
The study, although only in the very early stages, may be useful in the treatment of baldness.
It is said that by the age of 35 some 40% of men suffer from some degree of hair loss and by the age of 60 some 65% of men will have to experience a degree of hair loss.
Mark Black from The Trichological Society, believes that in the next 5 to 10 years a cure for hair loss will be found.
“It is a matter of time before we find a cure for male pattern baldness as well as alopecia. We know so much more about hair today and how it grows,” Blake told The Sunday Express in the UK
Source: Castellana D, Paus R, Perex-Moreno M. Macrophages Contribute to the Cyclic Activation of Adult Hair Follicle Stem Cells. PLOS Biology. 2014.