Can An Arthritis Drug Cure Baldness?
Most men who suffer from hair loss, do so with a baseball cap and a smile on their face. Being bald can be sexy after all, right? I mean Vin diesel and the Rock pull it off well and have even made a following of women who swoon over men without any locks on their head.
If you pale in comparison to those mega stars - and you’re hiding behind your baseball cap wondering how it would feel to have a full head of hair again, you’re not alone. And thanks to a newly discovered treatment from Yale researchers, your dream may not be so far from reality.
The researchers have recently created buzz in the industry after showing promising proof than a man with a rare disease that left him without any hair on his body was able to grow back a full head of hair again by using an arthritis drug.
The hair re-growth happened not just on the patient's head, but also helped them to again have hair on their eyebrows, eyelashes and even facial and body hair.
Because this patient also suffered from psoriasis on the
scalp, the doctor had prescribed him tofacitinib citrate, a drug used to treat
rheumatoid arthritis that also helped treat psoriasis.
Dr. Brett A. King, assistant professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine was quoted in a recent CBS News report on the findings as saying, "This is a huge step forward in the treatment of patients with this condition. While it's one case, we anticipated the successful treatment of this man based on our current understanding of the disease and the drug. We believe the same results will be duplicated in other patients, and we plan to try."
After looking into it, it seems the drug works by triggering the hair to grow again even after the immune system has attacked and shut down.
The next step is reportedly a proposal for a cream form of the drug to help those with less severe cases of alopecia.
Hairfear - 6-23-2014
