Hair growth was electrically prodded into happening in/on rats and in/on nude mice, using a clever gizmo, says a new study. The news potentially raises excitement about growing hair akin to the excitement about disease treatment raised by numerous reports of cancer being cured in mice.
The new study is: “Self-Activated Electrical Stimulation for Effective Hair Regeneration via a Wearable Omnidirectional Pulse Generator,” Guang Yao, Dawei Jiang, Jun Li, Lei Kang, Sihong Chen, Yin Long, Yizhan Wang et al., ACS nano, epub 2019.
The authors, at the University of Wisconsin, USA, at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and at Shenzhen University, China, report:
“a universal motion-activated and wearable electric stimulation device that can effectively promote hair regeneration via random body motions was designed. Significantly facilitated hair regeneration results were obtained from Sprague–Dawley rats and nude mice. Higher hair follicle density and longer hair shaft length were observed on Sprague–Dawley rats when the device was employed compared to conventional pharmacological treatments…. This work provides an effective hair regeneration strategy in the context of a nonpharmacological self-powered wearable electronic device.”
(Thanks to Mark Benecke for bringing this to our attention.)