Korean J Dermatol.  2006 Oct;44(10):1178-1185.

The Effect of Medications Used in Mesotherapy on Hair Organ Culture and Culture of Dermal Papilla Cells

• Lee WJ
• Choe YS
• Lee JC
• Lee SJ
• Kim DW
• Min PK

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Hair loss including androgenetic alopecia and chronic telogen effluvium is recognized increasingly as a physically and psychologically harmful medical condition. Mesotherapy is considered as a new therapeutic modality for hair loss.
OBJECTIVE
We studied to determine the effect of medications used in mesotherapy on hair organ culture and culture of dermal papilla cells.
METHODS
First, occipital hair follicles were collected from patients with androgentic alopecia and separated into single hair follicles. The single hair follicles were cultured in William E media mixed with mesotherapy medications such as lidocaine, placental extract, Pondil(R), CRP-1000(R), and mixture of all these medications at different concentrations (1, 10, 50 microliter). On the 8th day, the cultured single hairs were stained with H&E and the length of those was measured under a microscope to compare with control group. Immunofluorescent study was performed to check expression of Ki-67, Bcl-2 and Bax on the hairs. Second, dermal papilla cells were isolated from occipital anagen hairs of patients with androgenetic alopecia and cultured in Dulbeco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM). The mesotherapy medicines were added to the medium with one and two thousand dermal papilla cells, respectively. At the 3rd day, survival of the cells was evaluated with ELISA method comparing with control group.
RESULTS
There were no statistical differences of the length of the hairs and the survival of the dermal papilla cells between experimental and control groups. With Bcl-2, we couldn't see any differences between experimental and control groups. With Ki-67, experimental groups showed less expression than control group. On the contrary, experimental groups showed more expression than control group in case of Bax.
CONCLUSION
We can conclude from the results that the four medications used in mesotherapy are not effective for growth of cultured hair follicles and survival of cultured dermal papilla cells. However, more study would be needed for the establishment of objective and scientific evidences supporting mesotherapy and we should be in search for new medications for mesotherapy.

Keyword

Dermal papilla cells; Hair organ culture; Mesotherapy

MeSH Terms

Alopecia
Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay
Hair Follicle
Hair*
Humans
Lidocaine
Mesotherapy*
Organ Culture Techniques*
Lidocaine