Is stem cell therapy for hair loss is effective or not?
I tried everything for my hair like hair transplant, PRP, mesotherapy and taking multivitamins
etc but I didn't get any good result.
Maybe my hair is get worse.
I'm a female, 26 years old and I'm nearly bald.
My doctor is suggesting for me the stem cells treatment.
So what do you think?
Should I go for it?
Thank you for your question!
You're 26 years old and you submitted a photo which demonstrates significant hairloss and
that you've tried many modalities to treat your hair loss including transplant as well
as mesotherapy, injections, multivitamins etc.
As a 26 year old female with very diffuse hair loss, I would ask first that you have
a proper diagnosis as to the cause of your hair loss.
Female pattern hair loss which accounts for 95%, when you talk about hair loss, 95% is
either male pattern or female pattern hair loss.
Within female pattern hair loss, there's statistics that 30% of women under the age of 50 having
hair loss compared to 50% of women over the age of 50.
Female hair loss very much an area that is really not paid that much attention to.
I suspect there is no single solution.
You've asked about stem cell therapy.
I think that you can learn a lot from our experience.
Our practice has developed a method of hair loss treatment called Hair Regeneration which
we use for male and female pattern hair loss as well as usual situation such as alopecia
areata, systemic lupus erythematosus and other immune diagnosis.
However, one of the things I would do for a person in your situation if you have come
to us, if you have not gotten a biopsy, then it is very important that in minimum, we do
several points in the scalp of biopsies.
We actually send our pathology sample to our very respected university pathology department
to be sure that we have a correct diagnosis.
Even with our Hair Regeneration treatment, which is a combination of extracellular matrix
designed originally for wound healing which is derived from pig bladder and combining
that with platelet-rich plasma, we have in rough number over all.
When it comes to male pattern hair loss, we have close to 100% or 99.9% success rate of
benefit.
In female pattern hair loss around 70%-80% and with alopecia areata, lupus, we have a
50% rate of success.
There are certain conditions however that we cannot treat with this stem call based
therapy which includes scarring type of alopecia.
These are conditions such as lichen planopilaris.
So if you have not have a biopsy, then biopsy would be the first thing I would recommend
read by a very experienced pathologist familiar with hair.
Not every pathologist looks at hair just like any other specialization is medicine.
The most common diagnosis in hair loss is androgenetic alopecia.
Once the diagnosis has been confirmed then we would then proceed to options for treatment
to try to regenerate.
A lot of our patients come to us, when we miniaturization which is when the hair is
slowly thinning.
They go from thicker hair to thinner hair then we tend to call that as some variation
of androgenetic alopecia.
So those types of alopecia tend to respond to Hair Regeneration treatment.
The term stem cell therapy has been overused and abused and a lot of people who offer are
basically offering a questionable treatment for very desperate people.
So it's very important that you do your research and you understand what it means to have stem
cell therapy.
We have heard that stem cells derived from plants that are being injected.
And other people are doing deriving stem cells after doing liposuction.
Certainly, there is some legitimacy to that.
There has actually been a study where placing fat under the scalp derived from liposuction
actually helped hair growth.
I think it has to do with some relation to the stem cells and growth factors to initiate
hair growth but that's a discussion outside the scope of this question.
Again, I think the take home message is proper diagnosis then consider proper treatment.
Hair Regeneration is something that we offer is something that you can learn about and
learn about the concepts about and decide if this something worth pursuing and finding
a provider that can offer you that in an area that may be convenient for you.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!