Hair Transplants from the Dead?
Hello dr Rassman, what do you think about this article? It’s about removing scalp from dead people in order to cure baldness.
USA Today – Hair-raising ideas to cure baldness
This article is from 2007, but I don’t remember writing about it before. It discusses a treatment tested in lab animals that “reduces the length of time any recipient must be on immunosuppressant drugs to just a week”… instead of a lifetime. I can’t seem to find more recent info on it though, and the toxic immunosuppressant drugs still in use today have to be taken forever, which is just one of the reasons that transplanting hair from a dead person just isn’t worth the risk.
The question the article’s author poses is, “But what if it were possible to move an entire, full and durable scalp from another person, albeit a dead one, all at once?”
Yes, what if it were possible? Who would do want this done? I know zombie movies and TV shows are popular right now, so maybe there would be some volunteers…
I remember last year there was a patient who had a full face transplant. His original face had been burned or something to that effect, I am not sure. Nonetheless, his whole face was disfigured including his scalp. Even his hair had been burned so he was quite bald. However, the replacement face they gave him, the scalp had a full flock of hair so this patient not only got a brand new face but a full set of hair. I know its not the ideal way to get a full head of hair, but I thought I would share my two cents worth.
Patients who have facial transplants require – as do all patients with organ transplants from non-identical twins – long-term use of immunosuppressant drugs to reduce risk of tissue rejection. A scalp that still has functioning follicles from a “dead person†would be no different. First, the scalp with hair – as with any organ such as the liver heart, etc – would have to be obtained shortly after death, “prepared†(oxygenated, etc) before the tissue has died, and transplanted shortly. The recipient’s immune system would then recognizes the dead persons scalp as “foreign†and elicit an immune response, which is the basis for required immunosuppressant drugs.
BiotechMD: To be fair, the person asking about the article is specifically referring to situation where long term immunosuppression was no longer necessary (due to some kind of medical miracle).
Transplants without the need for anti-rejection medications aren’t entirely far-fetched. There are some promising approaches floating around, and anti-rejection cell therapies for human transplantation are supposed to enter trials in 3-5 years.
But, even if they’re successful, I would imagine it will be a long time before such approaches are really available to bald/balding men, and unlikely they would really prevent rejection in 100% of cases over the course of several decades.
It really seems like they should be able to figure out how to clone hair follicles before they perfect rejectionless organ transplantation though…
Glad 9, I didn’t fully appreciate that that questioner was raising the possibility of a situation (transplanted scalp) where rejection meds wouldn’t be needed indefinitely. But, such approaches do not now presently exist for foreign(transplanted) tissues. If this ever changes, it will be a major breakthrough for those receiving solid organ transplants as well as other tissuesl