This journal is not indexed in MEDLINE or PubMed and so would not generally be considered a legitimate part of the biomedical literature.
The publisher (Herbert Publications, Hyderabad, India) is also on Beall's List of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers":
Reversal of hair greying is definitely possible. I'm in my early 30s, and I have a few grey hairs. Sometimes I find one that started growing as grey and turned back to brown at the root. I've never heard of this happening to anybody else. I have a few saved as proof.
Same here. However, I once read that this is actually not a example of reversal. IIRC, it's a (less-common) case of the hair losing its color starting from the tip. I'll see if I can retrieve the source.
The level of evidence here is not really believable in my opinion. It seems to essentially consist of two kind-of blurry sets of before and after pictures.
I'm not a stem cell biologist by any means, but I'm also surprised their IRB approved this... IV mesenchymal stem cells for supranuclear palsy? Hope they are following them for neoplasms...
> The trial was conducted as per Guidelines given by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Approvals for clinical trials were obtained from Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) and Institutional Stem Cell Research Committee (ISCRC).
Given that that none of the authors are at a recognized institution, I would really like to know which committees they are talking about.
It is amazing how much more people care about their hair and skin in comparison to, say, their blood vessels when it comes to aging.
Some more on the topic of hair and stem cells in the papers and publicity materials linked below. Note that first generation stem cell transplantation in most cases appears to work largely through signaling. The transplanted cells don't stick around for long, but suppress inflammation and oxidative stress, encourage regeneration, etc, by changing the behavior of native cells. Oxidative stress reduction seems a plausible mechanism for reversing graying to some degree as a result of stem cell transplants.
Oxidative stress is generated by a multitude of environmental and endogenous challenges such as radiation, inflammation, or psychoemotional stress. It also speeds the aging process. Graying is a prominent but little understood feature of aging. Intriguingly, the continuous melanin synthesis in the growing (anagen) hair follicle generates high oxidative stress. We therefore hypothesize that hair bulb melanocytes are especially susceptible to free radical-induced aging.
"Hair graying is one of the prototypical signs of human aging, but its mechanism is largely unknown. To elucidate the mechanism of hair graying, we investigated gene expression related to melanogenesis in human hair. The key molecules in melanogenesis, microphthalmia-associated transcription factor-M (MITF-M), Sox10, Pax3, tyrosine related protein-1 (TRP-1), and tyrosinase, were absent or greatly reduced in the bulbs of white hair compared to black hair. Melanocyte stem cells (MSCs) or melanocytes express markers for neural crest cells, Sox10, Pax3, and MITF-M. Taken together, our data suggest that hair graying is caused by defective migration of MSCs into the bulb area of hair."
"People who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out. The build up of hydrogen peroxide was caused by a reduction of an enzyme that breaks up hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen (catalase). Hair follicles could not repair the damage caused by the hydrogen peroxide because of low levels of enzymes that normally serve this function (MSR A and B). Further complicating matters, the high levels of hydrogen peroxide and low levels of MSR A and B, disrupt the formation of an enzyme (tyrosinase) that leads to the production of melanin in hair follicles. Melanin is the pigment responsible for hair color, skin color, and eye color. The report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase). What's more, the study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition, vitiligo."
> It is amazing how much more people care about their hair and skin in comparison to, say, their blood vessels when it comes to aging.
It is amazing, but not surprising. People are vastly more reactive to the things that provide immediate feedback.
What we see, hear, touch and taste provide feedback that is simple for people to process and understand.
Appreciation of long term future loss or damage is not programmed into humans particularly well. We are biologically designed to worry about the present, we dwell on the past (far too much), and the future is something that might never happen (the old adage; you might be hit by a bus).
We see this every day with people that smoke cigarettes. Every single smoker knows that smoking is going to put them in an early grave, but they still continue, because the short term pleasure to the senses, outweighs the perceived long term risk.
> Every single smoker knows that smoking is going to put them in an early grave, but they still continue, because the short term pleasure to the senses, outweighs the perceived long term risk.
Hits home.
Quit 5 years ago, knew all the risks, evidence etc none of that worked, my mum a heavy smoker ending up in the cardiac unit at 54 was what finally did it (turned out to be nothing serious), I stopped on my 30th birthday and never touched another one.
Had my mum not ended up in hospital the week before my 30th birthday (which does make you take stock) I think I'd still be smoking today.
I don't know, even after smoking for a few years I could still "feel" it, beyond just the cessation of craving; it's the same feeling I get when I use nicotine lozenges sublingually for focus (which I do at most once a week to avoid tolerance)
People will always care about physical traits more than anything else because they are visible and effect how people perceive you. For example, a young guy who gets some grays is going to care a lot about that because it could lead to rejection from girls lets say. Its superficial but thats how things work.
> It is amazing how much more people care about their hair and skin in comparison to, say, their blood vessels when it comes to aging.
I'm thinking that the state of your blood vessels isn't something that has been highly visible to others in the past, whereas your hair and skin have been visible, if imperfect, indications of your health and youth. Signalling health and youth to others has been a good strategy for your genes to use, to get additional copies of themselves into circulation.
The publisher (Herbert Publications, Hyderabad, India) is also on Beall's List of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers":
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/