Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center have been seeing great progress and potential to address one of humankind's most concerning medical state - unwanted baldness. Unless the person wants to go bare-naked from the neck up and flaunt the smooth round contour of a clean and shaven head, getting patches of baldness is usually not something people chase after.
Alopecia areata is an idiopathic disease, meaning that there is actually no determinant to what causes the disease, and one of its symptoms is that it lets the immune system attack hair follicles. This causes the afflicted area to actually stop developing and growing hair. Though not morbid nor fatal, the social implications and burden of having unwanted and unwarranted baldness makes it highly dreaded.
Nevertheless, the scientists and researchers over at Columbia University Medical Center have been making progress in the restorative effects of ruxolitinib, an FDA approved drug which initially was for the treatment of a rare type of bone marrow disease.
On its second stage of drug testing, ruxolitinib has been found to be highly effective on mice samples which had localized baldness, causing hair to be restored almost fully in as early as 12 weeks from start of drug administration, according to a report from Medical News Today.
Initial testing of applying the drug on the bald spot twice a day showed positive and great results, restoring hair from once-bald areas in approximately 4-5 months. This is parallel with the discovery in the use of a similar drug tofacitinib that also caused full hair restoration in humans.
The recent findings and research progress has been published in the medical and clinical journal Nature Medicine.
