The researchers believe they are moving closer to identifying more genes that control hair follicles and hair growth and this will ultimately lead to potential gene therapies aimed at treating baldness. Kev's comments Dr Christiano continues with zeal to identify single gene mutations involved in hair loss diseases. Identifying genes that are irrefutably active in hair follicles is a big step forward in our understanding of hair cycles and growth. This research will help us better understand the activity and functions of different cells in hair follicles and suggest ways that we could intervene with gene therapy to manipulate hair follicle activity. The common hair loss diseases, androgenetic alopecia and alopecia areata, involve multiple susceptibility genes and they are not purely genetic diseases.
Environmental factors can also contribute to the rate, or extent, of hair loss.
Finding the genes involved in these types of hair loss disease will be much more difficult. It may be more difficult to find an effective single gene therapy for these diseases polygenic diseases because no single gene is the key to hair loss. It may be that androgenetic alopecia, alopecia areata, and other hair loss diseases will have to be treated with gene therapy that involves transfecting several genes into hair follicles at the same time to create an effective result.