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Hair Loss News Archives
October 2005
Scientists isolate baldness gene
October 2005
TONY EASTLEY:
Baldness has long been a curse for
many men, but a group of Melbourne researchers have
gone some way to helping solve the genetic puzzle of
hair loss.
The researchers, from Melbourne's St Vincent's
Hospital, have used DNA technology to isolate the
gene which causes a rare disorder leaving cavities
in the hair shafts.
Around 80 per cent of Australian men and 50 per cent
of women suffer some degree of baldness by the age
of 50.
But the researchers say this latest breakthrough
could help to solve genetic baldness within 10
years.
Daniel Hoare reports.
DANIEL HOARE: Pili annulati is a rare, inherited
condition which causes hair loss. But a team of
researchers studying the condition at Melbourne's St
Vincent's Hospital think it could provide the
breakthrough needed for solving genetic baldness.
Using DNA technology, the researchers have isolated
the chromosome which causes pili annulati.
Rod Sinclair, a professor of dermatology at St
Vincent's, says it's a minor discovery in the very
large jigsaw puzzle concerning genetic hair loss.
But he says it's nevertheless an important
breakthrough.
ROD SINCLAIR: What's unusual about this condition is
that the hair growth switches on and off in this
rhythmic cycle, so that the hairs that are produced
have this spangled appearance. Now what's important
from our point of view in terms of learning about
the genetic basis of this is that it opens up a new
area of research within studying hair growth.
DANIEL HOARE: Professor Sinclair says that tracking
the evolution of hair loss in humans, as well as
hair growth, goes back a long way. And he insists
that for those who are already bald, there will come
a time when they will be able to grow that hair
back.
ROD SINCLAIR: Hair's something that's been a unique
feature of mammals for 180-million years, and so
it's something that, the growth of hair's preserved
through evolution for 180-million years, and along
with that is an incredibly complex system to
regulate its growth, to regulate its distribution on
the body, to regulate hair length on different parts
of the body, and similarly it's when these factors
go wrong that people start to lose hair and go bald.
DANIEL HOARE: Is there any possibility for those out
there who've already lost their hair that they may
be able to get it back, or is this something that
would require switching off a gene before it
actually occurs?
ROD SINCLAIR: Well we know that it can go both ways,
because you've only got to look at the chin of a
10-year-old boy and you can see how hair can be
induced to grow on the beard from nothing.
And so what we're seeing in baldness is in some ways
the reverse of that, where the hair that was there
miniaturises and no longer grows, and so we know
that there must be ways to turn this on, turn this
off, to modulate the hair growth. And when you can
do that, then you'll be able to treat and reverse
baldness.
TONY EASTLEY: Rod Sinclair a professor in
dermatology from Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital.