It’s well known that obesity is linked to the development of numerous diseases in humans. Heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments are extremely common in obese individuals.
However, it’s not fully clear how body organs specifically deteriorate and lose functionality from chronic obesity.
In a new study from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, researchers examined how a high-fat diet or genetically induced obesity can affect hair thinning and loss.
They found that obesity can lead to depletion of hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs) through the induction of certain inflammation, blocking hair follicle regeneration and ultimately causing hair loss.
Normally, HFSCs self-renew every hair follicle cycle. This is part of the process that allows our hair to continuously grow back. As humans age, HFSCs fail to replenish themselves leading to fewer HFSCs and therefore hair thinning.
Although overweight people have a higher risk of hair loss, whether obesity accelerates hair thinning, how and the molecular mechanisms have been largely unknown.
In the study, the team found a high-fat diet accelerates hair thinning by depleting HFSCs that replenish mature cells that grow hair, especially in old mice.
Those mice show the faster hair loss and smaller hair follicles along with depletion of HFSCs.
Even with high-fat-diet feeding in four consecutive days, HFSCs show increased oxidative stress.
The team says the inflammatory signals in HFSCs strikingly repress Sonic hedgehog signaling that plays a crucial role in hair follicle regeneration.
In addition, the activation of the Sonic hedgehog signaling pathway in this process can rescue the depletion of HFSCs. This could prevent the hair loss brought on by the high-fat diet.
This study provides interesting new insights into the tissue dysfunction that can occur following a high-fat diet or genetically induced obesity.
It may open the door for future prevention and treatment of hair thinning as well as for understanding obesity-related diseases.
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The study is published in Nature. One author of the study is Hironobu Morinaga.
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