Substance may trigger hair loss, says study

A product sold as an aid to hydration and hair growth may actually cause hair loss. That’s what a new scientific study by researchers at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine points out and published in the scientific journal Cell Reports.

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This discovery, however, was made by chance. In a study done on mice that analyzed how different types of fat affect obesity and the growth of tumors related to being overweight, researchers observed a marked loss of hair on the animals’ backs.

Some mice were fed a high-fat diet containing lots of fish oil, while others were fed a high-fat diet containing plant-based cocoa butter. These rodents were compared to a low-fat diet control group. And the unexpected happened: mice fed omega-3-rich fish oil lost a considerable amount of hair. Meanwhile, mice fed cocoa butter (which contains saturated fats) and control animals on a low-fat diet showed no hair loss.

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The researchers double-checked this result by performing experiments with different types of mice, and each time the result was the same.

After not finding any other research in the medical literature that described this phenomenon, the researchers decided to investigate in depth what was happening. Scientists used fluorescence to track omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil and saturated fatty acids from cocoa butter after ingestion. While the saturated fats in cocoa butter moved to various parts of the body, the omega-3 fats accumulated in the skin.

By accumulating in the skin tissues, the oil generates a cytokine response and activates the immune system, which initiates a process of follicular cell death and the consequent hair loss. According to the researchers, since most diets in the United States are low in omega-3s, the possible adverse effects of the supplement on hair growth may have been underestimated.

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“Interestingly, we noticed that nations that rely heavily on fatty fish as a food source (such as Japan) exhibit the most hair loss when compared to other Asian countries. Case reports that a tuna-rich diet induced hair loss as well support our observations in animal studies. Although hair loss takes a wide variety of forms and can be due to multiple innate properties and environmental triggers, our well-controlled animal studies have provided solid evidence to support that excessive consumption of n-3 FAs [ômega-3] confers a detrimental effect by causing diet-induced hair loss,” the authors wrote in the study.