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Do the telogen phase hairs in an FUT strip get implanted (and survive)??


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  • Senior Member

To start off, it's unclear to me whether telogen phase affects all of the hairs in a graft, or just some of the hairs.

Question: It is said that about 10% of hairs (or grafts?) are in the telogen phase at any time. Do these hairs get implanted during FUT or not? Do they actually survive? If the outlook is bad for those hairs, does the FUT really still have better yields?

 

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  • Regular Member

Very Interesting question and one for some of the doctors on here I would think?

It would be very interesting to discover that for example that in a strip that yielded lets say 3,000 FU's that probabilities would say that some 300 FU's in resting phase were unable to be implanted or properly identified by technicians disecting the strip

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  • Senior Member

Not with single hair grafts, obviously there is no hair visible in a single follicle that is dormant...but it is possible in a multi hair graft that there could be a follicle in the telogen phase.

Gillenator

Independent Patient Advocate

I am not a physician and not employed by any doctor/clinic. My opinions are not medical advice, but are my own views which you read at your own risk.

Supporting Physicians: Dr. Robert Dorin: The Hairloss Doctors in New York, NY

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  • Senior Member

Good question.

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  • Administrators

Excellent question, unfortunately the answer is no. Hairs in the dormant phase are not transplanted, this was what fueled some of the FUE vs FUT debates. That said, the percentage is very small. Something like 10% of hairs are dormant. 


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  • Senior Member

Still, a harvested FU which contained say 3 follicles in its natural state could potentially have a single follicle in the resting phase with no hair shaft present.

Gillenator

Independent Patient Advocate

I am not a physician and not employed by any doctor/clinic. My opinions are not medical advice, but are my own views which you read at your own risk.

Supporting Physicians: Dr. Robert Dorin: The Hairloss Doctors in New York, NY

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  • 3 weeks later...
10 hours ago, bismarck said:

They do get implanted. But unfortunately it is likely that they are usually transected and contribute nothing beyond a mild sterile inflammatory response, (not any actual coverage).

Does that mean any grafts which are damaged during extraction/implantation and do not survive illicit an inflammatory response in the scalp?

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  • Senior Member

That may be part of Bis' entertaining sense of humor...😉

Gillenator

Independent Patient Advocate

I am not a physician and not employed by any doctor/clinic. My opinions are not medical advice, but are my own views which you read at your own risk.

Supporting Physicians: Dr. Robert Dorin: The Hairloss Doctors in New York, NY

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  • Senior Member

Ah let me explain.

Here is a hair follicle:

image.png.0fe53709f181ef1c41703d813a1735b8.png

I would imagine that, even with magnification loupes, these would be pretty hard to see if dormant. So if an adjacent "sleeping" follicle is partially removed, all that brings with it is cellular debris. My guess is that this dead follicle  would cause some inflammation when implanted next to a living follicle (as opposed to the surrounding connective tissue/plug). I could be totally wrong though, it might bring growth factors and extracellular matrix with it that helps growth, or induce just the right amount of hormesis to promote follicle development.

I should have probably just not said anything, it's really not a helpful theoretical discussion.

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  • Senior Member

I think everything you contribute in these threads is helpful my friend.

I want to make a distinction...a dormant follicle is simply in the resting phase...it is not a dead follicle....once rested it will enter a new growth phase and why even though it may be transplanted while dormant, it can potentially still grow again.

Does that make sense?

Gillenator

Independent Patient Advocate

I am not a physician and not employed by any doctor/clinic. My opinions are not medical advice, but are my own views which you read at your own risk.

Supporting Physicians: Dr. Robert Dorin: The Hairloss Doctors in New York, NY

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  • Senior Member
9 minutes ago, gillenator said:

I think everything you contribute in these threads is helpful my friend.

I want to make a distinction...a dormant follicle is simply in the resting phase...it is not a dead follicle....once rested it will enter a new growth phase and why even though it may be transplanted while dormant, it can potentially still grow again.

Does that make sense?

Yes I agree. I would add that this is true only if the dermal papillae/stem cell are transplanted, not if its the shaft or some other part of the hair follicle (ie. the stem or root). And if a follicle is in telogen, the chances of getting the stem cell perfectly are unlikely if you can't see it, particularly because you're not even aiming for that hair, you're aiming for the one that you can actually see.

There's been a lot of discussion about this in the past, I think the answer was no one knew if dormant follicles were being successfully transplanted, it stands to reason that some are, but if it's by blind luck, it's probably not many. In those with denser donor hair more often, in those with less dense donor hair less often. It would be pretty tough to test this hypothesis so I'm not sure of what use it is at this point.

Remember Nigam's supposed "stem cell duplication" from a few years back? He was trying to divide stem cells intentionally under high magnification and didn't have much success.

Edited by bismarck
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  • Senior Member

That's an important distinction that you make Bis,  and please read my prior post on the 10th where I make a point to mention a harvested "FU", not a single hair graft.

A stand alone dormant hair follicle is nearly impossible to harvest intact for the reasons that you provided however if there is a dormant follicle or more inter-mingled in a multi-hair bearing FU, then I believe the chances of harvesting it intact go way up and as mentioned before, will produce a hair shaft after adequately resting.

And I also will concur that this does happen by "blind luck" and yes probably not many because to begin with, resting follicles only comprise of approximately 10% of the overall scalp.

So in the end, 10% is not going to have a significant difference in visual density but I have always been of the opinion that every follicle is precious, limited, and invaluable.

Gillenator

Independent Patient Advocate

I am not a physician and not employed by any doctor/clinic. My opinions are not medical advice, but are my own views which you read at your own risk.

Supporting Physicians: Dr. Robert Dorin: The Hairloss Doctors in New York, NY

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10 hours ago, bismarck said:

Yes I agree. I would add that this is true only if the dermal papillae/stem cell are transplanted, not if its the shaft or some other part of the hair follicle (ie. the stem or root). And if a follicle is in telogen, the chances of getting the stem cell perfectly are unlikely if you can't see it, particularly because you're not even aiming for that hair, you're aiming for the one that you can actually see.

There's been a lot of discussion about this in the past, I think the answer was no one knew if dormant follicles were being successfully transplanted, it stands to reason that some are, but if it's by blind luck, it's probably not many. In those with denser donor hair more often, in those with less dense donor hair less often. It would be pretty tough to test this hypothesis so I'm not sure of what use it is at this point.

Remember Nigam's supposed "stem cell duplication" from a few years back? He was trying to divide stem cells intentionally under high magnification and didn't have much success.

Are you a member of other hair loss forums like hlt? Your knowledge regarding hair loss as well as style of writing reminds me of someone from there....

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