Approximately 30 million women and 50 million men experience hair loss due to their genes. While these numbers may seem alarming, fear no more! The cure to losing the genetic lottery might be in your Happy Meal.

Scientists in Japan believe a chemical that is used in McDonald’s fries might cure baldness.

The discovery occurred at Yokohama National University after researchers used a “simple” method to grow hair on mice with a chemical called dimethylpolysiloxane.

McDonald’s has been using that chemical in their fries for decades to prevent their cooking oil from frothing. So far, tests have been limited to mice, but the team is confident that this method will work with humans as both mice and humans share a similar skin cell structure.

Once the chemical was applied to mice, they were able to produce “hair follicle germs” (HFG) which is what spurred hair growth. The HFG cells allow for hair follicle development and can be used to reverse baldness.

“The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for the culture vessel. We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of culture vessel, and it worked very well,” said Professor Junji Fukuda of Yokohama National University.

They managed to create 5,000 HFGs, which were applied to the mouse’s body as part of the experiment.

Before you go dumping your head in some McDonald’s fries, keep in mind that the average human head has 100,000 HFGs, but this is a great start.

Fukuda said,

These self-sorted hair follicle germs were shown to be capable of efficient hair-follicle and shaft generation upon injection into the backs of nude mice.

Several days after applying the HFGs, black hairs began to grow on the mouse.

“This simple method is very robust and promising. We hope this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss such as androgenic alopecia (male pattern baldness). In fact, we have preliminary data that suggests human HFG formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells,” Fukuda continued.

The hair loss treatment industry in the United States is currently worth over $6 billion and the researchers are optimistic that this new breakthrough will eventually lead to a consumer-friendly hair growth product.

However, there is some bad news as well. It will take at least 5 years for human trials to start, and 10 years for treatments to be available assuming the trials go well.

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