Does a Higher Concentration of Minoxidil Provide Faster Results?
I’m 24 years old male and have hair loss both at the front of my head and the crown. I’m starting to use rogaine foam in combination with propecia. I’ve heard that using minoxidil in higher concentrations (10%) makes you see better results faster. Is this true?
Perhaps it’s possible that high concentrations of minoxidil will bring about faster results (I’m not sure), but nothing occurs overnight in this business as the timeline often goes into months. In other words, don’t expect a miracle. I don’t recall seeing any studies comparing the speed of regrowth for the 10% vs 5%.
Higher concentrations of minoxidil will produce more side effects, so read the instructions carefully.
Minoxidil will not reliably stay in a liquid solution at more than 5%, which is one reason that 5% is the maximally approved solution (and the basis of millions of dollars of clinical research). Minoxidil is now off-patent (generic), so a more effective and equally safe solution greater than 5% would presumably be a great financial boon to any pharmaceutical company, whose heavy financial investment in such a development program would be outweighed by significant profits.
Those individuals who obtain any minoxidil solution greater than 5% are using an unapproved drug with undefined safety and efficacy. Manufacturing and selling unapproved drugs (that are also misbranded with claims that are not supported by data) is not truly fair to those who have baldness, and many concoctions with minoxidil in solution greater than 5% are easily found on the internet. In some cases, individuals who have done this with minoxidil have been indicted for continuing to manufacture and sell these prohibited drugs after being told not to by regulators
https://www.justice.gov/usao/ut/press/releases/2012/September/FourchargedinFDAcase09282012.htm
I am unable to find any studies using minoxidil 10% solution in the scientific literature (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed)