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In the News – Follica Gets Another 7.5 Million in Funding

Snippet from the article:

Follica has raised more money for its quest against hair follicle disorders like male pattern baldness. The biotech startup, which is developing drugs that could spur the formation of new hair follicles, has raised $7.5 million in equity financing, according to an SEC filing.

Read the rest at Xconomy.com — Follica, the Biotech With Potential Drug Against Baldness, Nabs $7.5M Venture Financing

Follica is still in the development phase, so there’s no telling if this will end up working as well as many folks on the internet hope. The company’s policy is to not comment on their research and development, but the article at Xconomy.com does provide more insight into the venture capitalists that are funding it.


2010-06-03 09:22:28In the News – Follica Gets Another 7.5 Million in Funding

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In the News – Finasteride and Dutasteride Raise Prostate Cancer Risk

Snippet from the article:

A class of drugs meant to improve symptoms of an enlarged prostate gland actually increase the chance of getting a more serious form of prostate cancer, health officials said on Thursday. However, they also said the drugs’ benefits outweigh the risks.

The drugs in this group include Merck & Co’s Proscar and GlaxoSmithKline’s Avodar and Jalyn, as well as Merck’s Propecia, which is approved to treat male pattern hair loss.

The Food and Drug Administration said it revised the labels on all such drugs, called 5-alpha reductase inhibitors (5-ARI), to include the risk after reviewing two large studies.

Read the rest — Prostate drugs raise risk of prostate cancer: FDA

Today comes news that the FDA is warning that drugs like Avodart and Proscar may increase the risks of some forms of prostate cancer.

In the original studies, the overall incidence of prostate cancer in the thousands of individuals enrolled in a double blind FDA sponsored activity showed that overall risks of cancer in those men treated with 5mg finasteride (Proscar) saw a 25% decrease in risk of developing prostate cancer. After the study was published, pathologists looked at the types of cancer that they saw, and reported that of those fewer men that did develop prostate cancer, the presence of more aggressive cancers was greater in that group.

These risks are very small and the overall reduction of prostate cancer standing at 25% in the 7 year trial should offset the other risks of a more aggressive cancer, but the statistics on this are dubious at best. For those men who are taking finasteride (at any dose), they must recognize that there is a risk of a more aggressive prostate cancer, no matter how small that risk is.

The information about cancer reflects the experience with finasteride 5mg (Proscar), not 1mg for treating hair loss (Propecia). What we do not know is the threat of the 1mg dose, if any. There have been no reports that separate the 5mg and the 1mg dose in the cancer risk scenario.

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In the News – Finasteride and Breast Cancer

Snippet from the article:

New warnings will be added to the packaging of Finasteride after five men in Britain taking the drug developed breast cancer.

An analysis by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency found a total of 53 men worldwide on the drug had developed breast cancer.

The report from the MHRA said: “Cases of male breast cancer have been reported for finasteride, and the review suggested that an increased risk of male breast cancer associated with finasteride use cannot be excluded.

“Patients using finasteride products should be advised to promptly report to their doctor any changes in their breast tissue such as lumps, pain or nipple discharge because these may be signs of a serious condition, such as breast cancer.

Read the full article at Telegraph UK

Keep in mind that this is for men taking the 5mg dose of finasteride for use in treating the prostate. The number of male breast cancer patients is so low that making statistical sense out of the data is relatively impossible. Warning labels after 53 men out of over a million men that take the medication developed breast cancer? It seems to me that this will create unnecessary fear by putting a warning right on the packaging, as I don’t believe there are any other warnings listed on the packaging itself (at least not on the US version that I’ve seen). Obviously, 53 out of a MILLION is not something I’d worry about. I have a greater risk of being hit by a car.

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In the News – FDA Rejects Proscar and Avodart for Prevention of Prostate Cancer

Snippet from the article:

An FDA advisory committee has voted against approval of two drugs for the prevention of prostate cancer because of a link to increased risk of high-grade, aggressive forms of the disease.

GlaxoSmithKline’s Avodart and Merck’s Proscar are approved to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), or enlarged prostate, which is common among men over the age of 50. In studies, both drugs showed a nearly 25% reduction in the risk of developing low-grade forms of prostate cancer compared to participants taking a placebo.

FDA medical officer Yang-Min Ning, MD, PhD, says such forms of cancer “propose very little threat to men during their lifetime.”

Read the full text at WebMD — FDA Panel Rejects Drugs to Prevent Prostate Cancer

FDAThere is a great deal of politics going on that I really do not understand, but even with this panel rejection, I would not advise my own son to stop taking 1mg finasteride to treat his hair loss.

It is clear that finasteride at the 5mg dose seems to prevent prostate cancer to some degree, but it wasn’t enough for the FDA to label it as a preventive medication for prostate cancer. People will ultimately need to make their own decisions in regards to this medication, but keep in mind that at the 1mg finasteride dose that is prescribed to treat hair loss, there is really no evidence one way or the other that it could be a problem or even if it will prevent prostate cancer. More will be written by other societies and I will fill in the readers of this site once we know where it all “falls out”.

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In the News – FDA Being Pressured to Speed Up Device Approval

It sounds like the FDA is in a no win situation. First they are under fire by the Government Accountability Office for how it handles device recalls.

Snippet from the article:

The FDA is falling short in how it handles recalls of risky medical devices, a new report from the Government Accountability Office concluded, adding to the ever-mounting criticisms of the agency’s fast-track, 510(k) approval process.

Read the rest — FDA’s Fast-Track Medical Device Approval Process Under Fire

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And then at the same time, the medical device industry is pressuring the FDA to hurry up.

Snippet from the article:

Despite recalls of defective medical devices that have caused devastating injuries and millions of dollars in medical costs, the Food and Drug Administration is under industry pressure to speed up its approval process.

Read the rest — Despite recalls, medical device industry presses FDA to speed up approval process

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In the News – Fat Cells and Hair Growth

Snippet from the article:

A hat may no longer be the only answer for baldness. Researchers at Yale University have found new clues to the causes of hair loss in the fatty skin cells of mice.

Studying cells from the fatty layer, the researchers found that signals from these fat cells were needed to stimulate the stem cells at the base of hair follicles, which are dormant in baldness. These cells could help scientists identify how to treat hair loss in humans.

“The fat cells are important for hair growth. If they’re not there, the hair won’t grow,” said Valerie Horsley, the lead author of the study.

Horsley said her team will now work on identifying the cells in humans that do the same thing.

Read the rest — Going Bald? The Fault May Lie in Your Cells

It’s another mice study, but it’s at least a place to start. As the article points out, hopefully it’ll lead to new discoveries not only for hair loss, but wound healing and skin tumors.

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In the News – Fashion Designer Styles to Complement Alopecia Totalis

Snippet from the article:

A fashion-lover who lost her hair when she was just 18 months old due to alopecia has told how she’s learned to pick clothes that complement her baldness.

Rachel Fleit, a creative director for the hip New York-based womenswear brand Honor NYC, told Refinery 29: ‘After 30 years of being bald, I know what works and what doesn’t work.’

She says that she steers clear of structured blazers and dresses because they make her look like a ‘Svedka vodka fembot’ and prefers softer, more floaty shapes.

In a bid to create softness around her head she uses accessories such as big scarves or dangly earrings, while plunging necklines add a touch of femininity.

Read the rest — Fashion designer on how she learned to accept her alopecia and win over the style set

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In the News – Fake Doctor Claimed He Could Cure Hair Loss

Snippet from the article:

Timothy Syed Andersson billed himself as dermatologist to the stars. Andersson, known to his patients as Dr. Syed, had a wall of photos at his home office in San Francisco’s Lakeshore district, showing him with actress Julia Roberts and actress-model Elizabeth Hurley, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and other notables.

His Web site boasted of his research that had led to cures for everything from stretch marks to hair loss. San Francisco prosecutors say it was all a lie.

Read the full article at SFGate –Fake doctor fleeced patients, prosecutors say

As the article points, this guy was a con man with fake credentials, Photoshopped images, and was indicted in Sweden before fleeing to the US 14 years ago. He set up shop here and he was able to bilk people out of thousands of dollars each for treatments that were total BS. Shameful.


2010-02-04 15:31:35In the News – Fake Doctor Claimed He Could Cure Hair Loss

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In the News – Evolution of Hairless Humans

Snippet from the article:

Stand up straight! And do something about that hair!” Annoying? Sure. But such parental advice may have made humans what we are today. Because our upright stance, and relative lack of hair, may have enabled our human ancestors to run far and fast enough to capture their prey. So say scientists in the Journal of Human Evolution.

The idea that standing on two legs and shedding all that body hair might have helped early humans keep cool on the African savanna was first trotted out in the late 1980s. But those early models had our ancestors standing still in a gentle breeze. Scientists simply didn’t have the computational power to assess what might happen when those early humans had to up and chase down a meal.

Read the rest — Upright and Hairless Make Better Long-Distance Hunters

The above article is actually a transcript of a podcast. The published model can be found here.

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In the News – Drinks Lots of Coffee and Tea, Have Lower Diabetes Risk?

In non-hair-related health news…

Snippet from the article:

Drinking more coffee (regular or decaffeinated) or tea appears to lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to an analysis of previous studies reported in the December 14/28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, JAMA.

By the year 2025, approximately 380 million individuals worldwide will be affected by type 2 diabetes.

Despite considerable research attention, the role of specific dietary and lifestyle factors remains uncertain, although obesity and physical inactivity have consistently been reported to raise the risk of diabetes mellitus. A previously published meta-analysis suggested drinking more coffee may be linked with a reduced risk, but the amount of available information has more than doubled since.

Read the full article — Drinking Coffee, Decaf and Tea Regularly Associated With a Reduced Risk of Diabetes

Drinking lots of coffee to avoid type 2 diabetes? I guess it just shows that almost anything can be linked to something else if you’re really looking for a connection. It’s the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, but for diseases.