New treatment prevents hair loss due to chemotherapy

A medical breakthrough could mean that cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy will not have to lose their hair.

According to The Sun, Manchester scientists have discovered how to protect the hair follicle during chemotherapy.

The results will offer hope to patients who suffer from one of the most painful side effects of cancer treatment.

Dr. Talveen Purba, the lead author of the study, said that their new treatment, called CDK4 / 6 inhibitors, does not damage hair follicles in the same way as traditional chemotherapy .

"We have discovered that CDK4 / 6 inhibitors can be used temporarily to interrupt cell division without causing additional toxic effects in the hair follicle," he told the Sun.

"When we immersed CDK4 / 6 inhibitors in the scalp hair follicles of a human scalp grown in organs, they were much less sensitive to the harmful effects of taxanes."

His team hopes the results will help pave the way for other topical medications that could briefly suspend cell division in the scalp hair follicles of chemo-chemotherapy patients.

However, he acknowledged how much more research is needed to make this a reality for cancer patients.

"We are just scratching the surface of how they are damaging the human hair follicle," he told the Sun.

"We need time to develop more approaches like this to not only prevent hair loss, but also to promote the regeneration of the hair follicle in patients who have already lost their hair because of the chemotherapy."

In 2017, researchers announced that a cooling cap worn during chemotherapy could prevent thousands of women with breast cancer from losing their hair.

Scalp cooling systems – which use a cold gel or a refrigerated pump to lower the temperature of the head – have been available for some years for use in chemotherapy, but have never been widely used.

Experts believe that they could greatly reduce the risk of hair loss.

The Breast Cancer Foundation NZ is currently funding a pilot project of a scalp cooling machine that will help determine the number of women who keep more than half of their hair and do not need a wig after chemotherapy.