Berlin - Chemicals that help brain cells to grow may also lead to treatments for baldness, it was claimed yesterday. German scientists discovered that growth factors important for the development of brain cells also affected hair follicles.
Mr Ralf Paus, who led the research at Humboldt University in Berlin, demonstrated the link in new-born mice, whose hair normally falls out soon after birth and is replaced as they get older. By giving them extra amounts of a particular brain growth factor the mice were made to shed their "baby" hair earlier than usual.
