By Rita Rubin
WebMD Health News
Aug. 19, 2014-- A drug used to treat a rare bone marrow cancer caused hair to grow back in some people with alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that attacks the hair follicles, scientists have found.
A small study shows that the drug, ruxolitinib, was effective in mice and in three people with the disease. Alopecia areata is thought to affect between 4 million and 5 million Americans, can strike at any age, and affects men and women equally. They are generally otherwise healthy. But they lose patches of hair and, in rare cases, all of their body hair.
The two scientists who led the new study are Raphael Clynes, MD, PhD, who recently left Columbia University Medical Center to work for Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Angela Christiano, PhD, a professor in the departments of dermatology and of genetics and development at Columbia. Here, they discuss their research, which appears online in Nature Medicine.
Q. Why would you think to use a cancer drug to treat alopecia?
A. Christiano's past research suggested that in people with alopecia, hair follicles send out a false "danger signal" that triggers the immune system to attack them. Further research, which she and Clynes describe in their new report, identifies one way to stop the attack -- a new class of drugs that includes ruxolitinib, approved in 2011 to treat the bone marrow cancer myelofibrosis.
Q. How many people with alopecia have been treated with ruxolitinib?
A. Clynes and Christiano have treated a total of a dozen, the first three of whom are included in the new study. After 5 months of treatment, all three regrew more than half of the hair they had lost.
“They were very pleased and happy,” Clyne says. Of the next six patients, though, only three regrew that much hair, he says. The last three haven’t been treated long enough to reach any conclusions.
Q. If ruxolitinib promotes hair growth in people with alopecia, could it be used to treat run-of-the mill male-pattern baldness?
A. “It’s not obvious at this point,” Christiano says. She's looking into that question, though.
Q. What are the side effects?
A. The labeling for the drug lists a number of serious potential side effects, such as low blood counts and infection. More common and less serious side effects include headache and dizziness, according to the labeling. Clynes says one person in his study has had “a touch of anemia. Nothing significant.”
Because people with alopecia are generally healthy, he says, “we didn’t expect much change in the blood counts.” The side effects may be worse in people with underlying and chronic illnesses, he says. And ruxolitinib probably does suppress the immune system, putting people at risk for infections.
source : Drug Restores Hair in Alopecia Patients: FAQ
