Cancer, Arthritis Drugs May Cure Baldness

Some FDA-approved drugs that are used to treat cancer and rheumatoid arthritis can actually help to cure baldness, according to a new experiment conducted by a team of researchers.

Angela Christiano and his team at the Columbia University Medical Center treated laboratory mice with the drugs for five days, after which they got an unexpected 'side-effect' following 10 days---hair growth.

The team used tofacitinib (Xeljanz) for rheumatoid arthritis, and ruxolitinib (Jakafi), a blood cancer treatment drug, the JAK inhibitors. The team found that when the inhibitors were applied directly on the skin instead of being ingested orally, they triggered hair growth by activating cells in hair follicles.

"The surprise was when we started using the drugs on alopecia areata patients, when we used them topically the hair grew back much faster and more robustly than it did orally," said Christiano, according to NBC News.

While the drugs do work on human hair follicles, it needs to be applied to male bald heads to find out if it will work further.

The drugs inhibit a family of enzymes within hair follicles that are "suspended in a resting state", hence "waking" the hair, according to The Daily Mail