Fascinating study

Scientists transplanted hairs from both balding and non balding regions of the scalp onto immunodeficiency mice. (From several donors, one of whom was a woman)

Guess what happened?

The non balding hair grew modestly thicker, but the wispy vellus balding hairs... They completely regenerated... 300% diameter increase.
The authors expressed that DHT alone could not explain the phenomenon because it worked in male mice as well, and one of the donors of androgenetic alopecia vellus hair was a female with AGA and normal hormone levels.

So that's big NEWS to me, finasteride can stop further loss but has little to no affect on regrowth, yet if we put the vellus hairs onto an immunodeficiency mouse they fully regenerate...

And that study is old, when you consider what we've found out about immune cells recently, it's becoming clear that immune system irregularities are a prime suspect in this pattern baldness "crime scene investigation".

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10770218_Transplants_from_balding_and_hairy_androgenetic_alopecia_scalp_regrow_hair_comparably_well_on_immunodeficient_mice

Nice find.

AGA/MBP is an "autoimmune" condition, which in reality describes that the immune system is attacking something (toxin) and the tissue (hair follicle) becomes a casualty.

Hormones themselves concentrate the toxin (amplify its severity).

In the mid to late 90's, I never went too far with blocking DHT.

further proof the lymph system is key. make the connections.

But why doesn't cortisone creams and pills help? They suppress the immune system response and reduces the inflammation that may be killing the hair follicles. Yet it does next to nothing for growing back damaged, balding hair.

I say immune irregularities, might by more complex than simple on/off binary thinking.
For me the fact that one of the main differences between non balding and balding scalps is that our follicle stem cell are there but don't receive the signal to regenerate..
So aside from the follicle inflamation, the normal regeneration process does not occur...

If they could figure out the signal for that, then people could stop chemically castrating themselves. DHT is only part of the story.
Failure to regenerate is the other part.
Immune system seems to keep coming up as a likely candidate for both the regeneration process, and the anti inflammatory process...

How exactly, I don't know yet...