Sweet chrome dome, Ratman!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Your hair interacts a lot with the skin and blood vessels around its roots. Sometimes these interactions don’t go according to plan, leading to balding. Could the future of hair loss treatment be fixing blood vessels?
Muhammad Anhum and team investigated a sweet solution. They tried out a sugar called 2-deoxy-D-ribose – or 2dDR – on BALDING MICE. This sugar helped grow new blood vessels around hair follicles, giving them a VIP pass to nutrients and oxygen.
Results? Lush, luxurious mouse manes! The sugar treatment worked almost as well as Minoxidil. the leading hair growth medication.
For today’s stylish mouse, we recommend 2dDR – the “sugar rush you can brush!”
Reference: Anjum MA, Zulfiqar S, Chaudhary AA, Rehman IU, Bullock AJ, Yar M and MacNeil S (2024) Stimulation of hair regrowth in an animal model of androgenic alopecia using 2-deoxy-D-ribose. Front. Pharmacol. 15:1370833. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1370833