In a discovery that’s sprouting new hope for the hair loss industry, scientists have found that a naturally occurring sugar in the human body could be the key to combating male pattern baldness. The sugar, known as 2-deoxy-D-ribose (2dDR), plays a fundamental role in various biological processes both in animals and humans.
The new research, published in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, found that treatment using the natural sugar could be as effective as current solutions to baldness approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but without some of the negative side effects. The research team believes the sugar could boost blood supply to hair follicles to encourage hair growth. Testing the theory on mice, they compared the effects of applying 2dDR gel to skin with minoxidil, one of the few FDA-approved hair loss treatments currently available. The results were impressive: the