A cure for alopecia areata — which causes hair to fall out in round patches — might already be on the market as a treatment for a bone marrow disease.

The drug, ruxolitinib, was able to fully restore hair in mice within four to five months, according to researchers at Columbia University Medical Center. They published their findings in the journal Nature Medicine.

 

"We've only begun testing the drug in patients, but if the drug continues to be successful and safe, it will have a dramatic positive impact on the lives of people with this disease," said Dr. Raphael Clynes, who led the research.

Doctors are unsure what causes alopecia areata, which originates in the immune system. Four years ago, the researchers learned that immune cells damage hair follicles and subsequently stop them from growing, but that ruxolitinib caused the follicles to thwart those immune cells. They also identified a group of T cells that actually does the attacking. In that study, two FDA-approved drugs — ruxolitinib, which treats a rare form of bone marrow disease, and tofacitinib, which is for rheumatoid arthritis — fully restored hair in mice within 12 weeks, and the new hair lasted months after treatment ceased.

The small new study on seven women and five men, just using ruxolitinib, found that the drug restored hair growth fully in three patients with moderate-to-severe alopecia areata, within four to five months. The T cells responsible for harming the hair follicles were no longer found in those patients' scalps, too. Dr. David Bickers of CUMC's Department of Dermatology calls the results "a major step forward in improving the standard of care for patients suffering from this devastating disease."

This isn't the first time a drug targeted for one disease has helped alopecia patients. In June, tofacitnib was credited with regrowing their hair of a 25-year-old man with alopecia.