If this year’s Oscars did anything, it put the severe form of hair loss known as alopecia in the limelight. The disease causes the body’s immune system to attack hair follicles, resulting in patchy hair loss, or in some cases total hair loss. Currently, there are no approved treatments for the disease. But according to a recent Boston Globe article, those afflicted with the condition have new hope in the form of a pill. An experimental treatment from Concert Pharmaceuticals has restored a near full head of hair in roughly 30-40% of people with alopecia.
The drug, known as CTP-543, was tested on a group of roughly 700 people with varying degrees of hair loss due to alopecia. The 6-month study examined how many people were able to regrow hair to cover at least 80% of their scalp. Concert met their goal for 29.6% of people who received a medium dose of the drug, and 41.5% of people who received a high dose of the drug. The team is optimistic that the numbers will increase as time goes on as some peoples hair will take longer to respond.
