Snippet from the article:

Surgeons have performed the first transplant operation using an organ wholly grown in a laboratory to give a man a new windpipe. The 36-year-old is recovering after surgeons implanted the world’s first wholly lab-grown organ into his body.

The synthetic trachea was created by growing the patient’s own stem cells on an artificial “scaffold”, which British scientists helped design. Windpipes have been grown from stem cells before, but only using the collagen “skeletons” of donated tracheas.

The landmark operation at Karolinska University hospital in Sweden could mean patients may not have to wait for a suitable donor organ. This could be particularly significant for children, for whom donor tracheas are much more difficult to find.

Read the rest — Cancer patient receives first synthetic organ transplant

It’s not hair-related, but it’s science at work. Fascinating stuff, and a big leap forward for regenerative medicine.

For those curious, CNN also published an opinion article by Dr. Anthony Atala (a leader in regenerative medicine), where he discusses a printer that is being developed to “print” organs.

Snippet from the article:

Gray hair is, along with premature balding, one of the greatest fears of image-conscious men and women everywhere, but it may soon be a thing of the past. Scientists at the Ito Lab at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have identified the proteins that cause gray hair, which could lead to an eventual cure.

Scientists have known for years that hair color is determined by the stem cells that guide the development of hair follicles working together with color-producing stem cells called melanocytes. Today, NYU researchers announced they had isolated the wnt protein, which serves to coordinate pigmentation between the two types of stem cells.

Read the rest — NYU Scientists Find Possible Cure for Gray Hair

Protein manipulations are getting closer and maybe what we learned from these rats will be available to humans in the future. Of course, we need assurances that it will be safe, so the breakthrough will have to grind through the FDA process… which might take years.

Snippet from the article:

[Yevgeniy “Eugene”] Vasin charged $300 an hour to treat Cotter at his San Jose office and her home. Doctors at UC San Francisco said she had MS and put her on a regimen of medication, but Vasin told her that was wrong. He suggested she cut her medicine intake by half and injected her with vitamins. The injections included Cerebrolysin, a drug used outside the United States to treat Alzheimer’s disease, as well as baldness treatment Proserin and vitamin B-12, prosecutors said.

Read the full story — San Jose man charged with pretending to be a doctor

I assume the article is referring to Procerin, a saw palmetto-based tablet (if there’s a “Proserin” out there, I’m unfamiliar with it). Now I won’t debate whether Procerin works as a hair loss treatment, since regular readers already know my stance on saw palmetto… but I’ve not known it to be a suitable treatment for multiple sclerosis. Perhaps this fake doctor confused MS with BPH.

Snippet from the article:

“I have no problem saying this, but I’m losing my hair,” Chris Evans, 29, admitted to E! News at Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards.

Unfortunately, that poses a slight problem for the actor, who signed up for three Captain America movies and three Avengers films. “The fear is this [role] can span 10 years so I can be doing this character until I’m 40,” he explained. “I’m supposed to be like this superior human. He can’t be balding. How horrible would it be if this superior man has male pattern baldness?”

Read the full story — Chris Evans Admits: “I’m Losing My Hair!”

I’m not seeing any hair loss in the photos I’ve seen of this young man, but I doubt he has much to fear anyway, as hair loss hasn’t stopped leading men from wearing wigs in the past (see Sean Connery, John Travolta, etc etc). Besides, I think Captain America wears a mask that covers the entire top of his head…

Snippet from the article:

These days, “snake oil” is synonymous with quackery, the phoniest of phony medicines. A “snake oil salesman” promises you the world, takes your money, and is long gone by the time you realize the product in your hands is completely worthless.

But get this: The original snake oil actually worked. Save this one for the next cocktail party; it will blow your friends’ minds.

Read the full story — How Snake Oil Got a Bad Rap (Hint: It Wasn’t The Snakes’ Fault)

I had thought “snake oil” was synonymous with “medical scam” in most of the world, but I still get emails from people in various parts of Asia that truly believe snake oil will cure what ails you and want to know where to buy it. Sorry, snake oil doesn’t regrow hair.

Snippet from a non-hair-loss article:

Pop a Tylenol and take a brisk walk for protection against prostate cancer? That’s what the findings of two new studies published this week suggest.

In the first study, published Monday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, scientists found that men who took a daily dose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) for five years had a 38% lower risk of developing prostate cancer, compared with other men. Additionally, daily acetaminophen was associated with a 51% reduced risk of developing an aggressive form of the disease. Men who took acetaminophen for less than five years saw no protective benefit.

Read the full story at CNN – Prostate Cancer Studies Find Benefit in Daily Acetaminophen and Brisk Walks

This as an observational study of over 78,000 men, and while nothing is definitively proven here, the findings are interesting.

So why post this kind of health stuff on a hair loss blog? The majority of the readers here are men, and as the article points out: “Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men“.