Recent report from Taiwan researchers said that Male pattern baldness or male androgenetic alopecia may face the increasing risk of metabolic syndrome.
The prevalence of metabolic syndrome increases with age and also increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Some study showed that up to 25% of American population have prevalence with this syndrome.
Mean while, regarding to recent study said that identifying the syndrome in men with moderate or severe male pattern baldness may allow early intervention to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
Reported as April issue in Dermatology of the British Jounal, co-author Dr. L. H. Su from Far Eastern Memorial Hospital and Dr. Tony Hsiu-Hsi Chen from National Taiwan University, Taipei, doing population-based cohort study among 670 men with 16.6% of them have prevalence of metabolic syndrome and 67% more likely to have androgenic alopecia type IV or greater.
Conversely, after adjusting for age, family history, and smoking status, severe androgenetic alopecia conferred a 2.6-fold higher risk of metabolic syndrome compared to moderate androgenetic alopecia. Moreover, severe androgenetic alopecia was associated with a higher number of fulfilled components of metabolic syndrome, although this trend was not statistically significant, possibly due to the reduced sample size of the subgroup with grade III or higher androgenetic alopecia.
The only individual component of metabolic syndrome that was statistically significantly associated with male pattern baldness was HDL cholesterol. However the associations for other 4 components such as hypertenstion, triglycerides, waist circumference, and postprandial glucose, did not reach statistical significance.
based on their findings that androgenetic alopecia patients are at increased risk for metabolic syndrome; therefore, vigorous investigation of the components of metabolic syndrome in androgenetic alopecia patients is indeed necessary.
