Fights Cancer, Colors Hair
Despite the best-laid plans of researchers and drug companies, medical science packs exotic surprises and serendipitous results. Doctors using the drug minoxidil to lower blood pressure noticed that it also seemed to accelerate hair growth; the drug was soon marketed as Rogaine to combat thinning hair. Neurologists using a paralyzing toxin to control facial spasms discovered it also smoothed wrinkles--leading to Botox injections for more youthful-looking skin.
Now, French scientists report that a new leukemia drug, Gleevec, not only slows the progression of disease but has a startling cosmetic upside: It darkens hair color in some people who’ve gone gray with age. The drug is not considered a good candidate for cosmetic use, because it can cause liver and blood problems.
The finding has prompted an investigation into how such recoloring happens. In a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine published last week, doctors from the Victor Segalen University in Bordeaux describe a trial in 133 leukemia patients, ages 53 to 75.
As expected, the drug was effective in combating leukemia; Gleevec improves one-year survival rates significantly compared with standard interferon therapy, according to recent research.
Unexpectedly, though, nine of the 90 or so patients who had gray hair finished the trial with distinctly darker locks than they had at the beginning, the doctors said.
The change in color occurred after about five months of taking the drug, on average, and in roughly 10% of the patients with gray or white hair, said Dr. Francois-Xavier Mahon, the lead author.
“But the proportion is difficult to evaluate because many of them, and particularly the women, have colored [dyed] hair at this age,” he said.
Though anecdotal reports of this hair coloring effect had surfaced before, Novartis Corp. of East Hanover, N.J., the drug’s manufacturer, has no plans to test or market Gleevec for hair coloring, said Gloria Stone, a spokeswoman for the company. The drug comes in capsule form and belongs to a new class of anti-cancer agents that destroy malignant cells without damaging healthy cells. Other anti-cancer drugs harm malignant and healthy cells and aren’t as well-tolerated by the body, doctors say.
Doctors had expected Gleevec to accelerate the graying of hair, if it affected pigment at all, because it interferes with the action of an enzyme thought to assist the pigmentation process, said Dr. Michael Heinrich, an associate professor at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and a member of the team that helped develop the drug.
“I think that this finding provides interesting insight into what controls pigmentation in humans and might provide insight into treatments for graying hair,” he said. “Maybe we’ll even find a topical treatment that works. Obviously it has a lot of interest ... I’m going gray myself.”
