Globally, around 50% of men and women over the age of 50 will deal with some kind of hair loss, from hair thinning to a receding hairline. Thankfully, South Korean scientists may have found the cure to hair loss in both males and females, specifically for those with a common form of age-related baldness known as Androgenetic alopecia (AGA).
The new topical solution is made from stem cells of adult fat tissue, called adipose tissue‐derived stem cells (ADSCs), and when tested in a trial, it offered both safe and effective results. The researchers hope to expand the trials to more diverse populations to prove the results are successful to everyone suffering from baldness.
The placebo-controlled trial focused on ADSCs, as it has been found to secrete a significant number of growth hormones essential to hair development. Previous studies have shown that ADSCs can regrow hair in male and female participants, but this is the first human clinical trial to test a topical treatment against a placebo.
Sang Yeoup Lee, from South Korea’s Pusan National University, explained:
Recent studies have shown that ADSCs promote hair growth in both men and women with alopecia. However, no randomized, placebo-controlled trial in humans has explored the effects and safety of adipose-derived stem cell constituent extract (ADSC-CE) in AGA. We aimed to assess the efficacy and tolerability of ADSC-CE in middle-aged patients with AGA in our study, hypothesizing that it is an effective and safe treatment agent.
The trial involved 38 participants, nine women, and 29 men. Half of them received the ADSC-CE topical solution, while the other half received a placebo. All participants were asked to apply the solution directly to the scalp twice a day for 16 weeks.
Sixteen weeks later, the participants returned with successful results. Hair density in the group that applied the solution had increased by 28.1%, compared to 7.1% in the placebo group, and hair thickness increased by 14.2%, compared to 6.3% in the control group.
Lee concluded:
Our findings suggest that the application of the ADSC-CE topical solution has enormous potential as an alternative therapeutic strategy for hair regrowth in patients with AGA, by increasing both hair density and thickness while maintaining adequate treatment safety. The next step should be to conduct similar studies with large and diverse populations in order to confirm the beneficial effects of ADSC-CE on hair growth and elucidate the mechanisms responsible for the action of ADSC-CE in humans.
The results, published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, mirror prior studies that explore the effectiveness of ADSCs in stimulating hair growth. However, many of those trials worked with different delivery methods, such as using injectable techniques. This research suggests the innovative ADSC-CE topical solution is likely as efficient as intimidating therapies. And, as a bonus, using this solution would be more convenient because users wouldn’t need to visit the clinic frequently as they would with injectable treatments.
