Chemotherapy patients losing their hair while receiving treatment for cancer could soon be a thing of the past.
Scientists have developed a new technique described as a ‘powerful double weapon’ to help patients keep their hair.
It combines scalp cooling – where a patient wears a cold cap to help reduce the damage caused by cancer drugs – with a lotion which includes antioxidants found in the likes of red grapes.
Cold caps are already used by some cancer patients to minimise the amount of hair they lose.
The caps restrict blood flow to the scalp, which reduces the amount of cancer medication reaching the hair follicles.
Sign up for all of the latest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
Researchers at Sheffield Hallam University have found that combining topical antioxidants with cooling could ‘transform the ability of cooling to protect’ against hair loss.
A new study also revealed that cooling the scalp to 18°C is the optimal temperature to prevent damage to hair follicles.
Dr Nik Georgopoulos, an associate professor of cell biology, said he views hair loss as the ‘face of cancer’.
He explained: ‘The reason why people get hair loss is because, at the base of the hair follicles, there are these rapidly dividing cells that are actually feeling the toxicity of chemotherapy drugs.
‘Chemotherapy drugs are drugs that kill rapidly dividing cancer cells, but they cannot discriminate between cancer cells and rapidly dividing normal cells in the body.
‘At the base of our hair follicles are these rapidly dividing cells, or keratinocytes, that constantly grow and they end up forming the actual hair.
‘The cells that are rapidly dividing and grow the hair, they will die because of the toxicity of chemotherapy.
‘But if you cool them, they are protected, and I don’t mean just protected – prevented from dying.
‘So if cooling is used while the hair follicles are grown in the lab, it can completely prevent the toxicity. But there is a catch – you have to use the right temperature.’
Cool caps don’t work for all patients, so the study, published in Frontiers of Pharmacology, also combined cooling with the lotion.
The lotion contains antioxidants like resveratrol, which is found in red grapes and peanuts, and N-Acetylcysteine, a dietary supplement.
But the lotion isn’t ‘powerful’ enough when used alone, meaning it still needs to be combined with scalp cooling to be effective.
Eventually it’s hoped that the combined cool cap and lotion will not only prevent hair loss, but also ‘significantly accelerate’ hair regrowth once chemotherapy is over.
Dr Georgopoulos added: ‘For some patients, cooling works, and for others it doesn’t. Because some heads – I call them stubborn – they don’t cool enough.
‘By adding this topical product that delivers this antioxidant, we form a powerful double weapon that, based on our results in the lab, showed us it can transform the ability of cooling to protect.
‘Cooling does multiple amazing things at the same time.
‘You get the constriction of your blood vessels, they’re narrowing down, less blood goes to the scalp, less drug. It isn’t as simple as that.
‘Our research has shown that cooling can slow down the cells, stops them from dividing – protection.
‘It stops the chemotherapy drug going in – protection. It does multiple things at the same time as long as the cooling is optimal.
‘If it isn’t optimal, our approach is now allowing us to actually say “it’s OK, it’s not an ideal scenario, but we compensate for it with our topical product”.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.