Covering your gray locks with hair-colour may soon be a thing of the past, as a possible treatment for reversing the condition has arrived.
A team of European researchers have found that people who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress through accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out.
Their study shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS - a modified pseudocatalase.
The study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition, vitiligo.
"To date, it is beyond any doubt that the sudden loss of the inherited skin and localised hair colour can affect those individuals in many fundamental ways," said Karin U Schallreuter, study author from the Institute for Pigmentary Disorders.
"The improvement of quality of life after total and even partial successful re-pigmentation has been documented," said Schallreuter, who carried the study in association with EM Arndt University of Greifswald, Germany and the University of Bradford, UK.
To achieve this breakthrough, Schallreuter and colleagues analysed an international group of 2,411 patients with vitiligo.
Of that group, 57 or 2.4 per cent were diagnosed with strictly segmental vitiligo (SSV), and 76 or 3.2 per cent were diagnosed with mixed vitiligo, which is SSV plus non-segmental vitiligo (NSV).
They found that for the first time, patients who have SSV within a certain nerval distribution involving skin and eyelashes show the same oxidative stress as observed in the much more frequent general NSV, which is associated with decreased antioxidant capacities including catalase, thioredoxin reductase, and the repair mechanisms methionine sulfoxide reductases.
These findings are based on basic science and clinical observations, which led to successful patient outcomes regarding re-pigmentation of skin and eyelashes.
The study was published in The FASEB Journal.
