To find out a medicine that will cure baldness will make a revolution in this field of medicine. For now, there is no existing medicine, but hair research is moving into a few directions. The most exciting is for sure hair cloning and in 2014.scientist at Columbia University have successfully cloned hair in a mouse. Yet, they don’t have answers to some questions such as how this cloned hair will act, how long will it last and lastly are there any side effects to it.
Research on certain medications is being done such as Latisse which has proven effect on the eyelash growth, then Dutasteride as an improved version of Finasteride, but also higher concentracions of Minoxidil (7% and 15%) have been tested. Medicine that has shown to be effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is showing some positive effects in the treatment of alopecia areata but further studies are required. Stem cell research is also very promising and there are ongoing studies world wide. The treatment with our own stem cell from fat tissue has shown some positive effects in our practice as well.
Since the gene for hair loss has been identified, maybe there is a chance for genetic engineering to prevent future hair loss. There is an impressive improvement in the device that performs FUE technique. Up till just a few years ago, graft extraction has only been done manually. Today we have an automated technique (hand held drill or Neograft) which makes a wonderful help to a surgeon. Although there is an idea of creating robotic device that will do the entire process of hair transplantation itself and there is such device on the market (ARTAS), it turned out it has certain deficiencies and further technologic work should be done.
Therefore, there are a lot of new thing in the field of hair restoration so there is a hope that in the years ahead of us, we will have different options for treatment.