Stress could be causing your hair to fall out

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-11-27 03:00

International

Photographer: Armin Kübelbeck, CC-BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

A single stressful event can cause ongoing hair loss, according to US researchers. Their study using mice found that stress not only causes hair follicles to die, but it can also cause the immune system to attack hair follicles during future stressful events. The researchers suggest that bodies may be conserving their limited resources – sacrificing some hair follicle cells when under threat, while preserving the stem cells that allow them to be replaced once the threat has passed.

Media release

From: Cell Press

A single stressful event can lead to both acute and recurrent hair loss by triggering hair follicle death, which activates T cells that attack hair follicles during subsequent stressful episodes.

Journal/
conference: Cell

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Harvard University, USA

Funder: Declaration of interest: A provisional patent application has been filed based on this work. This work was supported by the New York Stem Cell Foundation (to Y.-C.H. and J.A.), the HSCI Junior Faculty Grant (to Y.-C.H. and J. A.), the Leo Foundation Award (to Y.-C.H.), the Pilot Grant from the Biology of Adversity Project (to Y.-C.H.), the Glenn Foundation Discovery Award (to Y.-C.H.), and grants from NIH/NIAMS (R01AR084566 and R01AR083416 to Y.-C.H.).

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