Hair Restoration Blog

Q:

Dear Dr. Mohebi,

I have a question regarding the FUT hair transplant process. Will the white hairs separated from the strip of scalp be used for hair transplant too? As I have some white hairs at the back of my head.

Thanks a lot.

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A:

Good question. We generally don’t discriminate between black and white. Every hair will be used. However, we can decide to use more of grafts with black hair on one area rather than others. We usually discuss these factors before a hair transplant and will definitely consider individual styling preferences when planning for a hair transplantation.

We always knew that graying hair is thicker and may even grow slightly better than pigmented, or dark, hair. There was a recent article featured in the British Journal of Dermatology, which spoke of a study which aims to discover the correlation between why hair grey’s through evaluating the proteins or genes, which are related to hair growth in black and white hairs.

This was done by observing the morph patterns in scalp hair and eyebrows in humans. Also, using a microarray analysis, the white and black hairs were analyzed by looking at the differential expression of their genes.

These scientists showed that keratin and keratin-associated protein genes in gray hair were up-regulated at least 2-fold in comparison with black or pigmented hair in their analysis.  They concluded the expression of genes or proteins associated with active hair growth is up-regulated in white or non-pigmented hair compared with black or pigmented hair. These results suggest that hair graying is associated with active hair growth.

For more information on the published article, go to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21916889