Twice-a-Day Pill Could Cure Alopecia Hair Loss

Around one or two out of a thousand people in the UK suffered from alopecia areata, a kind of hair loss that results in patches of baldness and is very difficult to treat, according to the NHS .

Usually a person develops the disease when they are between the ages of 15 and 29, with 60% of these finding their first bald spot before they are 20. Although the hair tends to grow back after about a year, it can be a reoccurring problem.

Around a fifth of people with alopecia areata have been found to have a family history of the condition, so it is thought that a person’s genes might affect how susceptible they are of developing it.

There have been few studies of targeted treatment for the condition, largely because experts were uncertain of the exact reasons why a person might develop it. But scientists from Columbia University Medical Center may have found the answer - and possible treatment.

Alopecia areata is caused by an anomaly in the immune system that causes it to attack the hair follicles, and the US team had previously been able to identify the cells involved in the destruction of hair, conducting a number of trials of a drug on mice that proved successful.

Stepping up their research, the team gave a twice-daily dose of bone-marrow cancer drug ruxolitinib to three patients, all of whom had lost at least 30% of their hair, over a period of five months, and publishing the findings in Nature Medicine .

All of the patients saw dramatic regrowth of their hair in that time. The picture below, from left to right, shows one of the study participants at the start of the trial, three months into it and four months into the study.

Dr Raphael Clynes, who led the research, said that more testing is still needed to establish if there can be widespread use of the drug in alopecia areata patients. However, the use of ruxolitinib is unlikely to benefit patients with the more common condition of male-pattern baldness - affecting around 6.5 million men in the UK - as the two conditions are actually unrelated, regardless of their similarities. However, despite this, the team says the news is still very exciting.

Study co-author Professor Angela Christiano, who has had personal experience with the disease, added that people with the condition suffer profoundly, but the findings are a significant step forward that can give them some hope. “The team is fully committed to advancing new therapies for patients with a vast unmet need,” she said.

Professor David Bickers, also from the university and who has treated many patients with the conditions, said that there have been few treatments that have proven to be effective against alopecia areata. “This is a major step forward in improving the standard of care for patients suffering from this devastating disease,” he said.

“We have only begun testing the drug in patients,” explained Dr Clynes, “but if the drug continues to be successful and safe, it will have a dramatic impact on the lives of people with the disease.”