Just because a man is bald doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on in his scalp. A molecule found in the scalps of bald men may offer clues about how male pattern baldness arises and what to do about it.
Men with male pattern baldness have higher levels of a molecule called prostaglandin D2 in the bald parts of their scalps than in parts still covered in hair, a new study shows. Prostaglandin D2 stops the growth of stem cells that give rise to hair follicles, stem cell biologist George Cotsarelis of the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and colleagues report in the March 21 Science Translational Medicine.
Cotsarelis’ group had previously found that bald men still have hair follicle stem cells, but that those cells are dormant in bald areas of the head. The researchers reasoned that either the stem cells lacked growth stimuli or an inhibitor prevented the cells from growing.