Geneticists have learned to predict how much bald man in 40 years
MOSCOW, 15 Feb — RIA Novosti. Genetics found two hundred DNA regions in one way or another affect the chances of baldness in men in middle age and control its form and the process of its formation, according to an article published in the journal PLOS Genetics.
“We found hundreds of new genetic signals associated with baldness. Interestingly, many of them related to the X chromosome, which men inherit from their mother,” says Saskia Hagenaars (Saskia Hagenaars) University of Edinburgh (Scotland).
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Many men and some women often begin to lose hair on the forehead or the crown in middle age, and often become partially or completely bald 40 year life. As shown by experiments and observations in recent years, baldness is called two sets of reasons — improper working of male hormones that suppress the activity of cells in the hair follicles, and mutations in genes controlling hair growth on the face and other parts of the body.
In recent years, scientists have identified several genes responsible for the development of partial baldness, however, according to Hagenaars, few people were interested in what mutations make men lose the hair on the back of the head or other regions of the head, forming the characteristic patches.
A large group of British geneticists have corrected this deficiency by analyzing and comparing the structure of DNA more than 50 thousand adults and elderly Britons, a third of which was bald, another 30% had bald spots, and the rest had normal hair. In total, researchers analyzed more than 14 thousand different mutations in their DNA potentially linked to hair loss, and combinations thereof.
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As for the “pattern” baldness affect tens to hundreds of genes, Hagenaars and her colleagues studied not individual mutations and DNA fragments, and the whole group of genes, whose totality is explained about half the variation in how men grew bald and had they the bald spot at all.
Through this approach, scientists were able to identify 287 genes and related sections of chromosomes that are in some way influenced the likelihood of bald spots and their shape. Most of them were in the “asexual” part of DNA, and about 5% on the female X chromosome.
Many sites were associated with genes responsible for the growth of hair graying in old age, the development of hair follicles, the thickness of the eyebrows and other things connected with the scalp. Other genes responsible for the likelihood of developing cancer, the bladder, the chances of development of senile dementia and a number of other things unrelated at first glance with the hair.
The combination of these genes allows a reasonably high degree of confidence — about 80% — to predict whether the person is bald or partially bald at the time of onset of 40 years.
“Of course, we are still far from making completely accurate predictions about how and when a person starts to go bald. On the other hand, the data obtained allow us to make a big step towards this ability. We are gradually getting closer and closer to understanding how genes orchestrate baldness,” concludes Riccardo, Marion (Riccardo Marioni), a colleague Hagenaars at the University.