Reverse Baldness By Blocking Enzymes

With all of the scientific advances that the medical community has been making lately, it is somewhat surprising that there hasn't been much of a focus on one of the most common issues for men and women—hair loss. For many people, hair loss can be devastating. It can affect everything from work prospects to romantic self-confidence. Finally, however, it seems like science is catching on and doing some research about how to prevent this problem.

Some exciting new discoveries have been made when it comes to hair loss, and although the experiments have only been done with mice, the results are extremely promising. Researchers from the University of Columbia set out to discover what happens when the JAK enzyme is blocked with a drug. When applied to the mice's skin, they were surprised to see that the drug caused rapid hair growth, even reawakening old follicles that were thought to be out of service.

So, what's the implication for human beings? Well, researchers are still working on that. They've tested human hair follicles and so far it appears as though the mechanism does function in the same manner for human hair. In a laboratory setting, the human hair follicles reached the same way. Whether or not this will work outside of a lab setting remains to be seen, but the results are extremely promising. Although a practical drug—that blocks the JAK enzyme to treat hair loss—may be off in the distance, it seems as though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration might take into account some other JAK-blocking drugs it has already approved. For instance, Tofacitinib (an arthritis drug) and Ruxolitinib (a blood disease drug) both block JAK and are already on the market.

Still, more tests need to take place in order to determine whether or not such a drug would work for people in the real world. But for the millions of people across the world who suffer from hair loss, these findings provide something that many of them haven't had for years—the hope that they can abandon more artificial fixes and that their natural hair will grow back.