LOSING your hair? Paradoxically, the answer to growing it back might be to pluck a lot of it out.
Baldness sets in when hair follicles stop generating new hairs. People have known for almost a century that plucking a hair can reawaken its follicle. But replacing hairs one by one is little use if you鈥檙e going bald.
A team led by Cheng-Ming Chuong of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has found that if you pluck out enough hairs in mice, it triggers widespread regrowth. The skin sees one plucked hair as a microinjury and sends out a distress signal that triggers the follicle to regenerate. But pluck enough and the strength of the signal triggers regeneration in undisturbed follicles too. Chuong says this coordinated decision happens via 鈥渜uorum sensing鈥�, a type of communication also used by bacteria (Cell, ).
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Will it work in humans? 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the 6-million-dollar question,鈥� says Nadia Rosenthal from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She says that unlike humans, mice grow hair in waves, which means their follicles may already have a propensity to coordinate.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭o regrow hair, pluck out what鈥檚 left鈥�