Breakthrough: Scientists May Have Found A Cure For Baldness Caused By Alopecia Areata
August 2014
A drug approved to treat a rare form of leukemia reversed hair loss caused by alopecia, a small study found.
The drug, ruxolitinib, helps reduce inflammation caused by disease. But it also helped three alopecia sufferers regrow full heads of hair within five months, according to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine.
“We still need to do more testing to establish that ruxolitinib should be used in alopecia,” said study author Dr. Raphael Clynes, director of the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology at Columbia University in New York City. “But this is exciting news for patients and their physicians.”
Alopecia is an autoimmune disease that leads to patchy hair loss. It is not the same as male pattern baldness, which has its roots in genetic and hormonal causes.
It’s not yet known if ruxolitinib can restore other types of hair loss.
The drug is just one of a few hair restoration treatments currently being tested. Here’s a rundown of four more follicular helpers that have shown some promise.
For millions of individuals worldwide who have receding hairlines, an experimental pill may just be the ultimate solution for their hair loss and baldness problems.
After identifying the immune cells responsible for hair loss in individuals with alopecia areata (AA), an auto-immune disease which occurs when the immune system wrongly attacks the hair follicles resulting in hair loss, medical researchers conducted a trial on a drug that could potentially cure the condition.
For the trial involving three patients with alopecia baldness, the researchers found that the pill fully restored the hair of the subjects; a breakthrough that scientists hope could pave way for a treatment that could help bald people regrow their hair.
Patients with alopecia areata often suffer from psychological and emotional distress. Rod Sinclair, a dermatologist from Melbourne, said that the condition could cause affected individuals, teenagers in particular, to become self-conscious and socially withdrawn. A report by Sinclair, which was published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2012, also revealed of teenagers with alopecia areata attempting to commit suicide
“We’ve only begun testing the drug in patients, but if the drug continues to be successful and safe, it will have a dramatic positive impact on the lives of people with this disease,” said Raphael Clynes, from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who led the study published in the journal Nature Medicine on Aug. 17.
The trial was conducted following tests on mice that used two new drugs that belong to a class of medicine known as JAK inhibitors, ruxolitinib, which is approved for use in the U.S and E.U as treatment for patients with a form of bone marrow cancer, and tofacitinib, which is FDA- approved for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. In the experiments conducted on mice, both ruxolitinib and tofacitinib fully restored the hair of mice with alopecia in just 12 weeks.
For the human trial, the researchers used ruxolitinib for patients who have moderate to severe alopecia areata with over 30 percent hair loss. Within four to five months after starting the treatment, the researchers reported that all of the three patients have restored their hair growth. The T-cells responsible for destroying the hair follicles also disappeared from the patients’ scalp.
“Notably, three patients treated with oral ruxolitinib, an inhibitor of JAK1 and JAK2, achieved near-complete hair regrowth within 5 months of treatment, suggesting the potential clinical utility of JAK inhibition in human AA,” Clynes and colleagues reported.
Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss for more than 6.5 million people in the US. Now, researchers havediscovered that a drug already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of a rare bone marrow disease – ruxolitinib – could restore hair growth in these patients.
The research team, led by Dr. Raphael Clynes and Angela M. Christiano of Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), recentlypublished the initial findings of their ongoing clinical trial in the journal Nature Medicine.
“We’ve only begun testing the drug in patients, but if the drug continues to be successful and safe, it will have a dramatic positive impact on the lives of people with this disease,” says Dr. Clynes.
Alopecia areata is a disease whereby the immune system attacks hair follicles – the parts of the skin from which hair grows. The majority of people with this disease experience bald patches over their head, face and body, although the condition can cause total hair loss in some cases. Alopecia areata is notoriously difficult to treat and the resulting hair loss is often permanent.
It is unclear exactly what causes the disease, but this latest study may shed some light, as well as offer a potential treatment.
FDA-approved drugs ‘fully restored hair in mice within 12 weeks’
Four years ago, the CUMC team conducted a study of more than 1,000 patients with alopecia areata. Their findings indicated that hair follicles send a “danger signal” to immune cells, which encourages them to launch an attack on the follicles.
The researchers investigated this further by studying mice with the disease. By tracing the danger signal backwards, they identified a certain set of T cells responsible for attacking hair follicles.
Through further research into cells of both mice and patients with the disease, the team pinpointed several immune pathways through which these T cells launch their attack. These pathways, the researchers say, can be targeted by a class of drugs known as JAK inhibitors.
The researchers tested two JAK inhibitors already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – ruxolitinib (approved for the treatment of myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow disease) and tofacitinib (approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis) – on mice with alopecia areata that had severe hair loss from the disease.
These drugs, the researchers say, fully restored the rodents’ hair within 12 weeks. Furthermore, this hair regrowth lasted for months after treatment had ceased.
Ruxolitinib restored patients’ hair within 4-5 months
In this latest study, the researchers report on the findings of a small, open-label clinical trial of ruxolitinib on patients with moderate-to-severe alopecia areata, defined as having more than 30 percent hair loss.
Early results of the trial revealed that in three of the participants, hair growth was fully restored within 4-5 months of treatment initiation. Furthermore, the T cells that attack the hair follicles were no longer present in the participants’ scalps.
Dr. Clynes says that although further testing is needed to determine whether ruxolitinib can be used for patients with alopecia areata, the findings so far are “exciting news” for those with the disease.
“There are few tools in the arsenal for the treatment of alopecia areata that have any demonstrated efficacy,” explains Dr. David Bickers, of the Department of Dermatology at CUMC. “This is a major step forward in improving the standard of care for patients suffering from this devastating disease.”
Earlier this year, researchers from Yale University published a study revealing how tofacitinib helped a man with alopecia areata grow a full head of hair.
Hair Study and Research 