minoxidil

Minoxidil was originally developed to treat high blood pressure. It is use for teating thinning hair was originally discovered when it was noted to cause increased hair growth as a side effect of this treatment. Topical Minoxidil is now the most widely recommended treatment for androgenetic alopecia. In the United States it is marketed as Rogaine and in New Zealand it is marketed as Regaine and recently a generic (and cheaper) version of topical minoxidil has become available under the brand name Headway. How minoxidil works to grow hair is somewhat of a mystery. Since it was originally a blood-pressure pill and because it is a vasodilator it was thought that it worked by increasing the amount of blood to the hair follicles. However other vasodilators do not stimulate the same response so that it is now thought that minoxidil works by a different mechanism. Recent studies have shown that topical minoxidil does not cause an increase in skin blood flow which was originally though to be the mechanism by which minoxidil works. Studies carried out by L'Oreal recently suggest that minoxidil works by activating PGHS 1 (prostaglandin endoperoxide synthase-1) which helps promote hair growth.