researchers reveresed hairloss in mice?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/b ... d=12932070


Researchers Accidently Reverse Baldness, Alopecia in Mice
Treatment Restored Hair in Mice, but is Far From Ready for Human Hair Loss
By KATIE MOISSE, ABC News Medical Unit
Feb. 16, 2011—


Good news for bald mice: A five-day treatment can restore a silky black coat of fur. But it will be a while before the hair-raising drug -- accidently discovered by University of California, Los Angeles scientists studying gut function -- is ready to be tested in humans.

Although baldness and graying have long been linked to stress, digestive disease researcher Dr. Mulugeta Million had no idea that inhibiting key receptors in a stress response pathway would have such a dramatic effect on hair.

"This was totally unexpected," said Million, a veterinarian and co-director of the UCLA/CURE Digestive Diseases Research Center. "We do not work on hair; we did not set out to study hair growth."

Million and colleagues were studying gut function in mice that happened to have alopecia -- hair loss -- because of an increase in corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a compound that seems to play a role in how the body responds to stress. When they injected an antagonist -- a compound that blocks CRF -- once daily for five days, the mice re-grew hair. It was an effect that held up for four months.

"We weren't prepared to see anything like that," Million said.

The antagonist beat out the commercial treatment for alopecia, Rogaine, which caused "moderate" hair re-growth, Million and colleagues reported in the Feb. 17 edition of the online journal PLoS One.

The authors suggest that temporarily blocking CRF receptors could be "a breakthrough therapy for alopecia," and might also hold potential for male pattern baldness and hair loss due to chemotherapy.

"What we can reasonably say is that the antagonist initiates the hair cycle," Million said. "In bald individuals, and in these mice, the hair follicles are in a resting stage. The antagonist awakes them. It turns on the cycle, and the growing phase starts."

The treatment not only reversed hair loss, it also prevented it if started ahead of time. It also restored pigmentation in the skin -- an effect Million said might prevent graying too.

Fountain of Youth for Balding, Graying Humans? Not Yet
Million now plans to tease out how the drug works, and hopes to find a way to send it specifically to hair follicles to reduce the potential for side effects.

"Stress is a very general response, and whether this antagonist could act in other parts of body where stress is also observed is unclear," he said. "The hope is -- and it is possible -- to design a molecule that will act specifically in the skin and won't interfere with other systems."

Once that can be demonstrated, Million said he will take the accidental treatment into clinical trials.

"We're at the early stage, and obviously we need to do more work to understand how this works, where it acts and, of course, if it has side effects," he said. "But we're excited because the effects are very dramatic, very quick, and last for so long."

Interesting stuff, time to look for a natural Corticotropin-releasing hormone inhibitor.

this maybe somewhat related:

J Invest Dermatol. 2010 Apr;130(4):995-1004. Epub 2009 Dec 31.
Corticotropin-releasing hormone stimulates the in situ generation of mast cells from precursors in the human hair follicle mesenchyme.
Ito N, Sugawara K, Bodó E, Takigawa M, van Beek N, Ito T, Paus R.

Department of Dermatology, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu, Japan.

Hair follicles (HFs) maintain a peripheral, functional equivalent of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, whose most proximal element is corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). The mast cell (MC)-rich connective-tissue sheath (CTS) of mouse vibrissa HFs harbors MC precursors. Differentiation of these MC precursors into mature MCs can be induced by stem cell factor (SCF). We have investigated whether the MC progenitors of normal human scalp HF CTS respond to stimulation with CRH. Microdissected anagen HFs and full-thickness scalp skin were treated with CRH (10(-7) M). CRH treatment induced the degranulation of CTS MCs, in addition to increasing the number of CTS MCs in full-thickness skin and HF organ cultures in situ. In the latter, cells with characteristic MC features emigrated from the CTS. CRH-receptor protein expression in the CTS was colocalized with Kit expression on some CTS MCs in situ. CRH treatment upregulated SCF mRNA and protein expression within the HF epithelium. In skin organ culture, CRH-induced degranulation of CTS MCs was abolished by anti-SCF antibody. We demonstrate that human skin is an extramedullary reservoir for MC precursors, and we have identified a regulatory loop between CRH and SCF signaling. This highlights a previously unpublished finding about neuroendocrine control of human MC biology.

CausticSymmetry Today at 2:54 am
J Dermatol Sci. 2010 Nov;60(2):67-73. Epub 2010 Sep 29.
Hair follicle is a target of stress hormone and autoimmune reactions.
Ito T.

I just read the abstract, but I think this study sheds light on the treatment that was accidentally discovered.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110216/ts_afp/healthusresearch_20110216230557
the correct link, wow?

GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid) can help reduce Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).

http://tinyurl.com/6kwzq8a

750 mg works the best for this purpose

Might be worth a shot for those who have stressful lives.

Also, it doesn't have to be general stress, it may be just a specific stress. (say, interruption of sleep cycle for example)

by zanza on Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:18 am
Also, it doesn't have to be general stress, it may be just a specific stress. (say, interruption of sleep cycle for example)

I was wondering about that too. What kind of stress are they talking about?

tonyj wrote:

by zanza on Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:18 am
Also, it doesn't have to be general stress, it may be just a specific stress. (say, interruption of sleep cycle for example)

I was wondering about that too. What kind of stress are they talking about?

id guess 'unknown,' but its not like you have bald people just go on vacation and grow their hair back
Anyways, very interesting study, this has given me some hope!

Broadly speaking there are 2 types of stress:

(i) stress in the sense of challenges to overcome that are good for you
(ii) chronic unrelenting stress that disempowers you and gets you down = BALD

M