Baldness Fixed by Combing? An Electric Comb Regrew Nearly All Lost Hair in Mice

A team in China says a comb-shaped device pushed two gene treatments deep into balding skin and restored close to all the lost hair in one month, beating daily minoxidil's roughly 70% (in mice, and known so far from a secondary report).

TL;DR

Imagine treating baldness by combing one's hair. In mice, that is close to what happened. A team in China built a comb whose "electronic teeth" carry two gene treatments and use a mild electric field to push them deep into the skin, and mice with pattern baldness that were brushed every three days for one month got back nearly 100% of the hair they had lost. Mice given daily minoxidil, the drug in Rogaine, recovered about 70% of normal hair. One of the two treatments grows fresh blood vessels around the follicles; the other turns down DHT, the hormone that shrinks them. This is a mouse result, and so far it is known only through a secondary report, but it points at something the hair field has lacked: a needle-free way to get gene-based medicine down to where hair actually grows. For our odds on when a gene-based hair treatment reaches people, and the timeline of hair breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.

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