Conventional Med

New Baldness Drug Goal Likely to Cause Major Disorders

March 24, 2012 by admin in Featured with 14 Comments

Research on the horrors of baldness—sarcasm intended—has discovered a presumed flaw in basic biology that researchers believe is a new target for treatment. So, of course, in their zeal to find a way to change the natural course of aging, they intend to find a drug that can control what, in their hubris, they’ve decided is a flaw in a person’s basic biology.

They’ve found that the hair follicles in mostly bald areas have more of a protein called prostaglandin D synthase (PGD2) than follicles in hairy areas. Of course, since they like to play at being gods, they figure that it’s quite all right to manipulate that protein. There’s absolutely no consideration for the fact that it does far more than act as a marker for baldness.

The study, Prostaglandin D₂ Inhibits Hair Growth and Is Elevated in Bald Scalp of Men with Androgenetic Alopecia, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, found that PGD2 increases in lab mice shortly before hair is shed. According to BBC News George Cotsarelis,professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania and chief of the research team, stated:

Essentially we showed that prostaglandin protein was elevated in the bald scalp of men and that it inhibited hair growth. So we identified a target for treating male-pattern baldness.

The next step would be to screen for compounds that affect this receptor and to also find out whether blocking that receptor would reverse balding or just prevent balding—a question that would take a while to figure out.

Notice that there’s no concern for the full range of effects that PGD2 might have, merely concern for how big a range of activity it has on baldness. So, let’s do his work for him.

Function of Prostaglandin D Synthase

PGD2 is necessary for synthesizing arachidonic acid, which is an essential omega-6 fatty acid. It’s found in cell membranes and is abundant in the brain, muscles, and liver. More specifically, arachidonic acid is needed for:

Repair and growth of skeletal muscles.
Brain health: Insufficient levels can lead to brain damage.
Muscle health: Arachidonic acid is well known to body builders, who supplement with it to improve muscle building, muscle strength, and muscle endurance.
Mediator of inflammation, both reducing and increasing it.

To attempt to control baldness by controlling PGD2 is clearly madness. It means that the researchers—and, of course, Big Pharma—are willing to take enormous risks with health in the ongoing rush to increase profits.

Will reducing PGD2 result in stupid men with flaccid muscles, no endurance, and massive inflammation, but with glorious heads of hair? Does it even make sense to find out?

Tagged baldness, baldness drugs, baldness pgd, conventional medicine, modern medicine, pgd2, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, prostaglandin, pseudo-science, pseudoscience, science

Alireza Hosseini

I don’t think the writer of this article is a scientist or even a MD. A scientist who knows about drug development, knows that the reason for that taking time as quoted from researchers, mean that they will work on steps from before to after of that target. It means the will try to identify the factors involved in productions of that PG-D synthase to it’s receptors in the hair folocles and will also use a route of application to minimize the systemic side effects (e.g. Topical). Then there will be many in-vitro, in-vivo animal studies and finally many phases of human trials, before and after the new drug marketing.
With the mentality of the writer, there wouldn’t be any drugs available to us. t
- Heidi Stevenson
  
  So what? Minimizing adverse effects of the potential involved with PGD2 for the purpose of eliminating or easing baldness is insane.
  
  You have stated nothing that contradicts what’s in the article. The fact is that it’s ignoring the sort of information presented here that has resulted in so much harm from so many pharmaceutical drugs. Steroids. Bisphosphonates. And so many others have done massive amounts of harm because pharmaceutical companies have gone full force into development and, at the same time, have hidden the adverse effects – all for the almighty profit.
  
  You sound like a shill for Big Pharma.
- squibble
  
  a scientist or EVEN AN MD???? md’s are waay higher up the list than your average run of the mil scientist :/
  
  besides – the easiest flaw to point out in this article is the prostaglandin being needed to make arachidonic acid –> arachidonic acid is needed to make prostaglandins –> it’s waay higher up the list of biochem reactions

Rsquaredg

Should the writer have to disclaim their state of “hairedness” in an effort to eliminate or minimize the appearance of bias?

Mitch

Oh for Christ’s sake…are you serious? They haven’t even started testing to find out which compounds would affect the specific receptors in questions. So, let me ask you…person who wrote the above diatribe…do YOU have a full head of hair? If there are any potential risks or side effects as there are with any kind of cosmetic medicine…then it’s a personal decision. Struck a nerve maybe?
- HeidiStevenson
  
  Thank you for making the point that they don’t know the effects of what they’re doing – and they’re going to act as if there aren’t any, or cover up the ones they find. It’s been done over and over before.
  
  Apparently, you aren’t aware of the lives devastated by the previous drug treatments for baldness. They were bad enough, and now they’re proposing something with even greater risks.
  
  Yeah, a nerve was struck. I’m sick of seeing this sort of thing over and over again. If people want to take the risks, that’s their right. I would never argue that. However, it isn’t possible to make a rational decision when the information isn’t out there – when it’s hidden outright, or hidden behind lines like, “It’s never been shown to …” while they pretend not to know the potential harm in what they’re offering.
  
  Yes, I’m serious.

Dlewis1498

This seems to ignore the fact that the treatment will likely be topical (as OC000459). Systemic reactions are unlikely. There are many topical drugs that could present evidence for this. Besides, the whole article became clearly BS when it said PGD2 is required to produce arachidonic acid. It’s the other way around. Prostaglandins are further down the cascade than arachidonic acid. The only drug I’ve seen to possibly deal with PGD2 only blocks the receptor site anyway, so scalp AND serum levels would remain the same.

Who exactly wrote this trash anyway?

sermodur

It depends of the general society.If bald people would find a job or a partner and wouldnt been excluded for that aspect then no matter if you were bald, but you and others exclude bald people and they have rights to search a cure
- HeidiStevenson
  
  No one’s suggesting that bald people don’t have a right to these drugs – but surely they also have a right to know the risks they’re taking.

Obrie126

Isn’t it that PGD2 is synthesized from arachidonic acid and not the other way around?

Simon155

You’d think someone writing this would have done their research before publishing wouldn’t you. Clearly not in this case. Aside from getting it back to front, it’s planned as a lotion – even in a tablet for to be honest, it may be that yor levels are too high, which can be detrimental to yor health – especially as an asthma sufferer… Reglation may be beneficial then, regardless of the effects on the hair.
The article reads as something ill researched and ill thought out. You have friends working at a competitor pharmaceutical or something?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Tom-Saueracker/1000568243 Tom Saueracker

What you fail to mention is that you presume WAY too much. What Cotsarelis was stating was that the PGD2 RECEPTOR is the target, not PGD2 itself. Furthermore, Cotsarelis was referring to a TOPICAL PGD2 inhibitor, not a systemic one. For example, Minoxidil was originally a pill-form antihypertensive. It had bad side effects when taken orally. Minoxidil applied TOPICALLY does not have the systemic side effects that oral consumption does and beneficially affects hair loss.

Cotsarelis is referring to a localized PGD2 receptor blockade, NOT systemic.

PGD2 is NOT required to make Arachidonic Acid. AA makes PGD2, so again your “research” is more than faulty, it is plain WRONG.

Do your research. Present the facts.

There are enough people suffering with hair loss who will be dispirited by your shotty crap that you post.

poop

So..
You can block one pathway of PGD2 while leaving others intact. It’s called blocking a receptor, and that is what they are doing (the GPR44 one). PGD2 will still exist and function normally in the other pathways. If the GPR44 signaling system is crucial for something else then you may run into problems but that doesn’t seem likely since PGD2 levels fluctuate normally and seem to be the/a cause of hairloss. Please, if you are the author, read the study, understand why you are wrong, and take this article down.

VanBrah

‘PGD2 is necessary for synthesizing arachidonic acid’ – WRONG

other way around bright eyes

a little wiki searching wouldn’t go amiss

arachadonic acid is a precursor thats broken down to make a lot of other molecules