Thank you for your question.
You submitted a question without a photo but you state in your question that you’re a
52-year-old female and that you want to know whether or not to continue taking minoxidil
or using minoxidil 5% after undergoing treatment PRP and Acell. And certainly, I can understand
that type of question even though we don’t have any further details about your clinical
picture.
A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island
for over 20 years. I am the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers, a system we developed
using Acell and PRP starting about 7 years ago and we’ve developed protocols that are
specific based on a very large volume of patients who we have been treating from all over the
world for these past 7 years.
And I would suspect that in this situation, your clinical picture is one most likely is
a female pattern hair loss or androgenic alopecia which is the most common. Essentially, 95%
of hair loss is genetic pattern hair loss, male or female pattern hair loss. I could
tell you that over the past several years especially in the early stages when we were
first developing these protocols of PRP and Acell which actually derived from treating
patients who we’re doing hair transplant for and from hair transplant where we’re
trying to improve the yield of the grafts as well as the healing of the donor area,
improvement of that area, we found that thinning hair became thicker. And in developing systems
and processes for women, we definitely had to overcome a large special group of obstacles.
We were dealing with issues with inflammation. We were dealing with issues of hair shedding.
At times, in the earlier years, wondering whether or not we should pursue treating female
pattern loss but as time went on, I made refinements into the system and the process and reduced
to a minimum the amount of shedding that would occur as a consequence of the treatment. And
ultimately, it has become a very effective treatment for female pattern hair loss. Generally
speaking, with more than 5 years of accumulative data and doing this for more than 7 years
and probably having the largest volume of patients again coming from all over the world,
I would say that this has turned out to be a really good treatment for female pattern
hair loss. We’ve been able to improve the density of the hair, we’ve been able to
improve the quality of the hair and it has been quite successful.
So the question about minoxidil and the role that it plays in terms of treatment of hair
loss, well basically it’s a pharmaceutical which prolongs the growth cycles. And it’s
the only FDA-approved treatment at the current time for female pattern hair loss, topical
minoxidil. Now the challenge for us when patients come with this, let’s say, longer than 6
months or years of using minoxidil, the question of whether or not to stop the topical placement
is sometimes a challenge and we still have to individualize it. But in general, I would
say that if you stop using minoxidil abruptly, then there’s a good chance that there’s
going to be a significant degree of shedding that may appear to be more than it actually
is but certainly can be distressing and concerning.
For those patients, I generally tell them to stay on the minoxidil for a few months
and we try to eventually wean them off of it. But when we do a treatment like this PRP
Acell called Hair Regeneration and the company we started, TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration,
we do the treatment and expect that for some people, there’s going to be a certain amount
of hair shedding particularly hairs that are close to the end of the growth cycle. Now
that generally means that there may be some shedding that can be concerning but it has
been my experience that shedding related to the treatment doesn’t last more than a few
months. However, people can have other reasons for shedding. So what I would try to do is
minimize the potential causes. So being on minoxidil and if it’s well tolerated then
I would keep the patient on minoxidil.
And we follow our patients very closely. We are able to make these statements about 5
years of data because we see our patients every 3 and 6 months and we do that for the
duration of 5 years after the treatment. So we’re able to really have good data and
get a lot of feedback about the experiences and of course, we are able to document their
improvement.
So I would say that discuss this with your doctor and learn about what their experience
is doing this treatment. This is still a treatment which has a lot of people doing it in their
own special way. And we’re doing it in our way and we again, derive a lot of information
probably having a lot of experience being at the front of the parade more than 7 years
ago. But again, I feel like what we’ve developed is very individualized and based on specific
data that applies based on age, age of onset, degree of hair loss, type of hair loss. And
these protocols have been refined and are always continuously being refined.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.