Fighting Baldness? Rip Out What's Left

Let's be clear: no one, and I mean no one, thinks a comb-over is handsome. People for years have argued that if you're balding, you might as well shave it all. Now however, a new study shows why some men will be pretty pleased that they hung onto their remaining hair.

The study, recently published in the journal Cell, showed that plucking out a great deal of remaining hair may reverse the balding process, regrowing patches at a time.

So how does it work? Experts have long known that when one hair is plucked, it sends out an inflammatory cytokine called CCL2 - a sort of distress signal that prompts the entire follicle to work on regenerating. This is not unlike how if men want thicker beards, it is recommended that they shave, grow, and shave again.

However, the catch is that this signal is intended only for the plucked hair's "microinjury" and will not apply to its neighbors. This is why men with patchy beards will likewise have trouble filling the 'problem spots' in even after they have their individual hairs growing thick and uniform.

Cheng-Ming Chuong, from the University of Southern California in Los Angele, wanted to challenge this wisdom, and set out to investigate if there was indeed a way to prompt entire patches of skin to promote follicle growth at once.

He did this by systematically plucking hair off the bodies of mice. It may sound rather cruel, but Chuong was working off a strong hypothesis, and he and his colleague quickly saw some very real results.

They found that when they plucked 200 hairs in a circle five millimeters in diameter, they could break a CCL2 accumulation threshold that prompted the growth of 1300 nearby hairs. The mice were essentially regrowing 6.5 hairs for every one that was plucked.

However, it's important to note that this study was done on young and healthy mice, not balding humans. Balding, it should be added, is caused the degradation of important stem cells in each hair follicle. These cells undergo rest and active phases and as they age, that active phase progressively shortens.

Annemiek Beverdam of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, a skeptic of the work, recently told New Scientist that perhaps plucking could rekindle old and tired stem cells to get back to work, but it would only be temporary.

"Once bald means bald forever, unfortunately," she said.

Still, the work does give hope for men looking to delay their inevitable baldness - perhaps among those who bald particularly early in life. In addition, the follicles somehow detected the CCL2 threshold breach through a form of cell communication called "quorum sensing." Experts now press that if this kind of communication is present in other systems, such as immune responses, it could have a significant impact on future medical work - something far more important than simply putting some fuzz back on a shiny head.

For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).

- follow Brian on Twitter @BS_ButNoBS