X-Message-Number: 11985
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:09:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug Skrecky <>
Subject: grape seed procyanidins and hair growth

  Has anyone tried smearing some grape seed antioxidents on their balding
pates? Any regrowth? (see below)
________________________________________________________________

Authors
  Takahashi T.  Kamiya T.  Hasegawa A.  Yokoo Y.
Institution
  Tsukuba Research Laboratories, Kyowa Hakko Kogyo, Ibaraki, Japan.
Title
  Procyanidin oligomers selectively and
  intensively promote proliferation of mouse hair epithelial cells in vitro and
  activate hair follicle growth in vivo.
Source
  Journal of Investigative Dermatology.  112(3):310-6, 1999 Mar.
Abstract
  We have previously reported that proanthocyanidins extracted from grape seeds
  possess growth-promoting activity toward murine hair epithelial cells in
  vitro and stimulate anagen induction in hair cycle progression in vivo. This
  report constitutes a comparison of the growth-promoting activity of
  procyanidin oligomers and the target cells
  of procyanidins in the skin. Results show that
  procyanidin dimer and trimer exhibit higher growth-promoting
  activity than the monomer. The maximum growth-promoting activity for hair
  epithelial cells with procyanidin B-2, an epicatechin dimer,
  reached about 300% (30 microM) relative to controls (= 100%) in a 5 d
  culture. Optimum concentration of procyanidin C-1, an
  epicatechin trimer, was lower than that of procyanidin B-2;
  the maximum growth-promoting activity of procyanidin C-1 was
  about 220% (3 microM). No other flavonoid compounds examined exhibit higher
  proliferative activities than the procyanidins. In skin
  constituent cells, only epithelial cells such as hair keratinocytes or
  epidermal keratinocytes respond to procyanidin
  oligomers. Topical application of 1%
  procyanidin oligomers on shaven C3H mice in
  the telogen phase led to significant hair regeneration
  [procyanidin B-2, 69.6% +/- 21.8% (mean +/- SD);
  procyanidin B-3, 80.9% +/- 13.0%;
  procyanidin C-1, 78.3% +/- 7.6%] on the basis of the shaven
  area; application of vehicle only led to regeneration of 41.7% (SD = 16.3%).
  In this paper, we demonstrate the hair-growing activity of
  procyanidin oligomers both in vitro and in
  vivo, and their potential for use as agents to induce hair growth.

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