Yet More Indian Studies Involving Microneedling

Dr. Rachita Dhurat

Follica recently updated their website yet again. This time, they added several clinical advisers on their “our team” section, including the well known Dr. Rachita Dhurat.

The reason this Indian doctor is well known is because of her groundbreaking 2013 study (with extensive before and after photos) titled: “A randomized evaluator blinded study of effect of microneedling in androgenetic alopecia: A pilot study“. In that study, she used a dermaroller of 1.5 mm sized needles (plus minoxidil) on 50 patients, and 41 of those patients showed a very favorable outcome. In the minoxidil only comparison group, just 2 of 50 patients saw similar results.

Moreover, in 2015, Dr. Dhurat published a second related study (albeit with a much smaller sample size of 4 patients), that found that microneedling led to new hair follicle growth in all patients. Moreover, none of these patients responded well to conventional therapy in and of itself (i.e., finasteride and minoxidil).

A number of extremely renowned US based scientists — such as Dr. George Cotsarelis (University of Pennsylvania); Dr. Luis Garza (Johns Hopkins University); and Dr. Maksim Plikus (University of California Irvine); — have undertaken research on microneedling and/or wound-induced hair follicle neogenesis and published detailed reports that I have covered on this blog before.

These scientists have received coverage in dozens of popular magazines in recent years. Nevertheless, for some reason, India based Dr. Dhurat is getting almost as much respect on this subject lately. This despite not having the same world leading university backing and related resources that the above scientists have. Nor any popular magazine articles written about her. Hopefully, fewer resources does not mean weaker research.

More Microneedling and Hair Growth Studies from India

When excluding Follica related discussion (e.g., this from “noisette” on HLT), microneedling has not been getting much coverage on hair loss forums in recent years. It used to in the past, as evidenced by one of my earliest post on this blog related to the dermarolling fad.

On the other hand, several new studies related to microneedling and hair growth have been published in India this year.

  • In January 2017, Indian scientists published a report in which they found that patients being treated with microneedling plus minoxidil plus PRP saw superior results in comparison to patients being treated with minoxidil alone.
  • And last week, scientists in India published a study in which they found PRP plus microneedling led to very favorable results when it comes to hair growth. Blurry before and after photos are in here (click on “preview article”) in case you can not access the full study via other means such as Sci-Hub.

Obviously the above two studies cannot be compared to Dr. Dhurat’s earlier work in terms of importance. Nevertheless, I find it surprising that scientists in the western world and Japan have not been focusing on microneedling and hair growth at all lately.

Side Note on Dr. Gordon Sasaki

One of Follica’s other newly added advisers (Dr. Gordon Sasaki) has several videos on youtube discussing microneedling. See Dermapen review and this video on PRP and Microneedling.