Square1

Fantastic that he is doing this and of course, as a researcher you should remain neutral and not get people's hope up too much, but I was hoping for more confidence from dr. Mohebi's side that this will actually work. It comes across like he is doing just not to get bugged anymore Anyway, what matters is that he will do the trials. Excellent work, again.

I have no idea. What I do know is that just inquiring about verteporfin is already good for the cause. The more docs hear about vert, the more they will get interested in following the developments and the higher the chance they eventually are willing to try / use it.

This and the fact that he appararently rejected the Acell / PRP hype due to lack of scientific evidence is encouraging. If somebody who has seen hypes and trends for what they were is willing to try vp, that means that he perceives the update of dr. Barghouthi and dr. Bloxham as more than just hype. Given his seniority and prominence in the HT-scene, it is clear that he has very little to gain from this experiment except for a way to get better results. I think this helps to convince other doctors and to legitimize the experiments in their eyes. Great work again by Melvin.

Fantastic work. Parsa Mohebi is a really well known doctor, if he could be convinced of vt's benefits and eventually starts offering treatments with vt, the drug is close to becoming mainstream. Live or pre-recorded? It doesn't matter to me. What matters is that he starts doing the trials. Best of luck and thanks again! Is it btw already sure the he will start trials or is the meeting to convince him of doing so?

In the pics of the OP, the 0.4 test site is visually at the same place as the results pics. I do agree that in this image and video, it seems like the site is at a different place. Maybe there is a logical explanation for it.

I agree. If you got the money to spare, I see no reason why not. Plus you are contributing to science if you document everything well. Hope it does something for old scars too btw, or that you can remove transplanted hair with (partial) regeneration.

With just a couple of pictures and a 6 seconds video, it is hard to get the context. If it is indeed true that that injury is healed like it seemd it is, it is impressive. Is there regrowth though?

I think we still don't really know how the miniturization process works and what the exact role of DHT is. It stands to reason however that, let's say a follicle starts to shrink at 30, it had endured 15 years of peak DHT production. So if the follicle can be "restarted" with verteporfin, it would take a long time before ever needing another treatment again, if ever. If you would take a miniturized follicle , remove it from the scalp (like a donor hair in a transplant) and treat the area with vp, would it then regenerate without the miniturization?

I guess I feel the same way. But to be fair, dr. Barghouthi´s initial results, despite showing some regrowth and therefore demonstrating that the mechanism could be working, were not cure-level yet. His recent results, after 16 months, are a lot closer to that. These trials could still end up going the same way.

I can see that as being an advantage. However, given the results dr. Barghouthi showed, I would anticipate slightly more regrowth. It's of course too early to draw conclusions just yet, so we might not put to much weight on this.

Overall, there seems to be an effect of verteporfin: better looking skin and some regrowth. Given that these changes hold, is it that significant though?

Great posts and great investagative spirit! I also wonder if transplanted grafts, when moved again, would grow back using verteporfin. If either of these ideas work, people with previous transplants can also enjoy the enhanced / unlimited donor.

Great work, again! With this type of exposure, I am sure that people will get their hands on verteporfin / visudyne and try it at home / the beauty salon in combination with microneedling. Questions I would like to see answered are if this could regenerate earlier removed donor hairs or miniturized hair (somehow removing the miniturization of the follicles).

Well, if wounding + verteporfin does produce full or even partial regrowth, why not do it once with a $200,- price tag and do it again in 10 years (or whenever the non-DHT resistant hairs start to miniturize again)?

Good to hear, I too thought that there was one way to get the stuff: for $2000 from just one German manufacturer. Didn't know there were generics. I am not aware at all in the medical field, but is medchemexpress.com a reliable site? It soundsrather shaky

Looks awesome! Maybe a slight addition could be made with regards to the sourcing and the pricing of verteporfin? Docs could then have an idea how much a trial would cost them and what they would have to do actually get it.

At some point, the money itself doesn't do that much anymore. If you are already financially independant and live in luxury, how much does an extra paycheck do for you? It is very probable that for many of these people, the possibility of contributing to the field and science in general, is an attractive idea. The problem is that there have been many hypes that turned out to do nothing, so there is a lot of scepticism to overcome. Luckily, dr. Barghouthi is a member of the ISHRS, so that would likely carry extra weight. Dr. Bloxham is not, but still his finding will be very important. If several doctors find the same thing, even sceptics will become interested.

The last thing we want is that docs refuse to do more work, because they felt being bugged the first time. So yeah, I agree. The guy is pretty enthousiastic so he will likely share his findings anyway, sooner or later. Have been in contact with a Dutch-Turkish clinic that politely turned the offer of participation down. Unfortunately, the claim of regrowing the donor area after a transplant was also made by others including dr. Coen Gho. Many people familiar with the matter know that this is nonsense, so if you make similar claims, you are faced with resistance right off the bat. If 1 could get 1 clinic to participate, that would already be great.

It would be really beneficial to know from dr. Bloxham if, after 4 months, there are significant and (what we see as) positive changes in the areas treated with verteporfin as compared to other areas. Even without further details, having this information as early as possible helps to steer the direction of further research.

I just posted the results of dr. Barghouthi on the leading Dutch forum for hair loss and checked hairlosstalk and hairlosscure2020, which have no mention of these latest results. More exposure is crucial. The online hair loss crowd is already niche, and the percentage that knows about verteporfin is only a fraction of that. The more people know about this stuff and call for trials, the higher the chance that more doctors are willing to try it. If we can get just a couple of studies with a objective hair count that show consistent regrowth, the ball will start to roll as more and more docs will use it and keep finding better ways and dosages

To play devil's advocate. I think that the test-site for 0.4 does not look completely untouched. To me, the density is visually lower than the part of the head above that was actually untouched. Dose optimization is still an issue it seems. However, the test-site lacks the open holes that the control site clearly has, so the most logical outcome is that considerable regrowth has taken place. Also very positive is that this regrown hair is still here after give or take 16 months. Fantastic that more research is in the pipeline. Does it include more scientific hair count measurements? If so, we can put a percentage on the hair it regrows and gives an benchmark for other scientists to improve upon. Overall, great news and many thanks again for the work of dr. Barghouthi. What percentage of regrowth do you think is achieved here?

If both the Bloxham and the Barghouthi trials find any percentage of regrowth that is persistant over a longer period of time, I would call them a success. It would show that the mechanism works and is capable of delivering results. If there is, let's say, a regrowth of 20%, that means that 20% of the skin had the right circumstances, amount of verteporfin delivered in the right way to grow back in such a way that would create new hair follicles. Further optimization would need to take place to understand how to increase it to a higher percentage. Of course, it would be even better to get a patient a full head of new hair back, but if it pans out like described I would be happy about it.

Didn't dr. Bloxham state that clients experienced new hair growth as opposed to less hair falling out? Anyway, we will find this out. The shock loss hair is supposed to grow back in the coming months. So if the hair count in the sites adjacent to the verteporfin injecting will become similar in treated and control sites , it was probably shock loss. In the animal trials, did the new hairs started growing directly from the treated areas, or did the areas heal first and thereafter started growing new follicles? I guess that is would be expected to have the same pattern going on in humans.

There seems to be regrowth in the areas adjacent to the sites injected with verteporfin. I get that the scarless healing would yield new skin and therefore new hair growth in the injected sites, but I wonder why it would happen in sites next to it. The difference in how the skin heals is definately interesting and is what we would expect to see if verteporfin works. Agreed that it is way to early to make definitive statements. I am mildly optimistic though.

But what is the harm done when the public knows these details?