Fox243

How is he able to ensure the longevity of the hair transplant as he extracts from a very wide zone, a lot of which isn't DHT resistant?

10 hours ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

I’m gonna be doing a podcast with Dr. Zarev later this month. Hopefully, we’ll learn a bit more about his technique.

You're the actual GOAT

fwiw, HairDAO is likely having a call on the 22nd with Longaker -- just waiting for a confirmation.

1 hour ago, Nikoni said:

Above 0.4 mg. That's what we learned from the previous trial. After the next trial we would be able to determine golden zone more precisely.
Hope you don't suggest to wait 6 months, to improve protocol based on  Bloxham's results.

No, I don't want to wait 6 months. But I'm curious why not something like 4 mg? Like right now, we have very little basis to come up with the dosage. I actually did the math myself to go from mice to human dosage through reading various papers -- if you trust me to come up with the initial dosage, I'd appreciate you trust my decision to wait a few more weeks to run the trial. If Longaker delays past August, I definitely agree that we should just do the trial in early Sep.

I guess more generally the point I’m trying to make is that we’ve made a lot of assumptions beyond the literature – many of which were made by people with no medical experience at all, as hair transplant surgery is very different than tinkering with research. So it’s not like Dr. Barghouthi has some magical experience which will help him find the correct dosage – this is partially why this research takes years. This is why I’d like to wait three weeks. 

11 hours ago, Nikoni said:

Progress in science is done through trials. Each new trial gives you knowledge to make the next trial better. If Longaker postpones the call for another two weeks should we wait again ?

I think if we wait for a couple of years, guys in Standford will develop much better solution, hydrogel, special injection needles etc. The goal of these trials to find out solution faster. And again this trial was already postponed few times. 

The best thing now I think is to have a podcast with Dr. to understand how he feels about continuing trials.

How would you suggest we improve the trials? What is the exact dosage we should use to hit the golden zone? I’ve been working with Dr. Barghouthi and there isn’t meaningful change we’d do from Dr. Bloxham’s protocol. This is why we are waiting – if we had lots of changes to make, at least we could expect something different, but we don’t. 

We’re looking for the pig study dosage at the very least. There is a chance he doesn’t tell us, but maybe he does, and if we’re an order of magnitude off, then this would be so helpful. 

I am the one who had asked Dr. Barghouthi to postpone the surgery, so if you want to blame anyone, you can blame me. But keep in mind that without me, my discord, my Verteporfin doc, and Dr. Barghouthi, the trials would never have happened in the first place. So please trust our assessment that it’s worth waiting till the Longaker call before doing another trial. Trials are expensive, so we want to find the right balance between efficacy and time. HairDAO is also doing a call, so if somehow this call doesn't happen, we'll have another backup.

7 hours ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

11:30 pacific time.

Any updates on what he said btw?

48 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

I’m scheduled to talk to Dr. Longaker today. Has anyone created a Verteporfin sub reddit? Might be a good idea to announce it there, hopefully we can streamline a protocol. As for FUT vs. FUE. I’ll ask which is theoretically better.

I will blow this up in the discord and telegram I’m in. What time is it? 

Just now, Jonathan said:

FUT Vs FUE, huge difference.

Why? FUT is predicted to show a greater difference in results because of increased SHH signaling. Can you please explain the science of how an FUE could work while an FUT might not? 

1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

Because we’ve already had success, of course limited and it’s possible that there’s things we can improve on, this trial was scheduled to start around April/may if I’m not mistaken, two weeks can turn into months which can turn into never. Let’s just do the trial how we did it before with different dosages as planned and keep moving forward, if longaker has advice we can do it on the next trial. Just my opinion.

We already have Dr. Bloxham doing a new trial with feedback from Dr Barghouthi. There’s not much to improve on that. There’d be a lot of redundancy. 

12 minutes ago, Nikoni said:

Good health to your son and hope you'll manage to schedule another call.

@DrTBarghouthido you have any updates with new trial date/previous patient follow up ? IMO doesn't worth to wait for Longaker , it is very uncertain we'll get info to improve protocol.

Why should we not wait for Longaker? If we can find out in a week or two, that would be huge. Could mean the difference between success and failure. We've waited so long anyways -- one to two weeks is nothing compared to that.

12 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Unfortunately, my son got sick the day I was to speak to Dr. Longaker. I’m trying to reschedule another slot. 

Hope your son is feeling better. Thanks for the update! 

Any updates @Melvin- Moderator

Today is the big day. Good luck @Melvin- Moderator!

There's a question that's been bugging me for a bit. Several papers provide contradictory research, sayign YAP activation is actually better for skin regrowth: Can you ask him to explain the contradiction?

Here are some papers:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2305085120

https://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/pdf/S1534-5807(21)00726-7.pdf

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2309991120

9 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

How about you guy’s write out a list of questions. I’ll be sure to ask them and report back here with the answers, if available.

The two most important things are 

1) What was the dosage he used in the pig studies?

2) What dosage and concentration would they plan to use in human studies?

These two questions will fill in the missing pieces for what we need in Dr. Barghouthi’s trial.

7 hours ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Dr. Mike Longaker, emailed me back. He’s setting up a time to call me. Will report back when I have more news.

Might be worth asking Dr. Barghouthi to postpone his procedure in case we’re able to get info for the pig dosing or human projected dosing.

48 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Dr. Mike Longaker, emailed me back. He’s setting up a time to call me. Will report back when I have more news.

 that’s insane. Thanks so much! 

2 minutes ago, Magic City said:

Very encouraging to see Dr Bloxham trialling this. He seems very informed on the treatment and very enthusiastic, which is a positive. 
What do people see as the potential outcome of these trials? If verteporfin proves successful at either minimising scarring or regrowing hair (or both), do you think it may eventually be used off label in hair transplants, given that it is an FDA approved drug with safety data backing it up? 

I appreciate there is a long way to go and many other hyped treatments have flopped, but the trialling is necessary with this drug I think to really understand its potential uses 

Yes, it’ll definitely be used. I’m very excited for this FUT because although Dr Barghouthi’s initial FUE showed us promising results, an FUT will show us much better whether it works given how much damage is done by an FUT.

19 minutes ago, Nikoni said:

Hi friends, what are your feelings so far ?  Do yo think it will lead to scarless healing ?
Vert definitely does something but I guess it needs trials to finetune the tings.

We just need to wait for Dr. Bloxham's and Dr. Barghouthi's results. Hopefully Dr. Barghouthi can show a one year follow up soon.

1 hour ago, Gatchpt said:

What’s the latest dude. Date is fixed? Any concerns arising? Keep’s in the light 

Nothing new. Date is still 7/11.

On 6/22/2023 at 3:25 AM, BeHappy said:

Any HT Dr can take as many grafts as Zarev does. They don't because they try to stay in the safe zone. It used to be considered a major mistake to take grafts from outside what is considered a safe zone. Now, for some reason, it's considered a great thing and is hailed as the best way to do a hair transplant. This makes no sense. If you really want to know if Dr Zarev is doing HTs better than other Drs then wait 5 to 10 years and see what happens to his patients hair. My guess is there will be a large percentage of them who have lost a lot of grafts by then.

 

I disagree. Most doctors don't spend enough time to figure out what grafts are going to be safe and which ones aren't. Given that Dr. Zarev spends multiple hours mapping out the donor zone, figuring out which ones outside of the "safe zone" will survive, he is able to get several thousand more safe grafts than other surgeons can. If he really thought that those grafts would be susceptible to further loss, he'd urge his patients to hop on the strongest stack possible (dut + oral min) but he doesn't even push his patients to take normal meds. Imho, most surgeons are more focused on scaling and making money, spending less time with their patients, while Dr. Zarev is one of the few doctors who puts his patients before everything else.

Dr. Bloxham has just provided his procedure -- please let me know if you have detailed experience in surgery, verteporfin, or FUTs in particular. We're trying to provide him advice by tomorrow night.

10 minutes ago, Ozbro said:

I'm in my late 20s and already NW6. I started losing my hair in my early 20s and to get over the stress of a balding head, I decided to shave off my hair and go bald style. That turned out to be a big mistake, as I didn't track the progression of hair recession, and without realizing it, I had already approached NW6 bald.

During this period, I went for PRP treatments and used Minoxidil spray but it didn't help much with the hair recession. I came across this forum last year in my search for hair transplant advice after giving up on non-surgical solutions, and after looking around, Eugenix seems to be dominating the space for high-density hair transplant cases. So a few months back, I reached out to the clinic for consultation and was advised to go through 3 treatments (1st one for the front and mid-scalp [3500 grafts], 2nd one for the crown, and the last one for density). But the issue is that being a Pakistani national, it's really hard to get a visa for India, even a single time, let alone 3 times (Eugenix clinic also warned me about it), and if I can help it, I would want to avoid any extra stress on top of hair transplant surgery when I'm getting the procedure done. So now I'm looking for options other than Eugenix, preferably in Turkey but I would be fine with other places too, and was wondering if any member can provide some good recommendations for clinics that are experienced in handling NW6 cases. 

FUE: Pittella and Zarev

FUT: Hattingnen