Category Archives: American Academy of Dermatology

2018 AAD Annual Meeting

The field of dermatology is quite vast and encompasses diseases and conditions of the hair (both body and head), nails, scalp and skin. Nevertheless, at the annual meetings of all the major dermatological organizations around the world, there are always many interesting presentations related to head hair, which most concerns us.

The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) was founded in 1938 and currently counts virtually all practicing dermatologists in the United States as members. I wrote a post on the 2016 AAD annual meeting, but did not do so in 2017 (when instead I covered the annual meeting of SID). Interestingly, SID was founded in 1937, just one year before AAD.

This year’s upcoming 2018 AAD annual meeting will be hosted in San Diego and run from February 16-20. See program overview here. A detailed pdf of all the presentations can be found here. Below are some of the interesting things that I noticed after a cursory glance through the program:

  • I was very surprised to see so many renowned hair loss researchers disclosing their affiliation with Aclaris Therapeutics (probably via research finding or grants). I am hoping that at least several of these researchers are testing JAK inhibitors on androgenetic alopecia patients for Aclaris and not just testing them on alopecia areata patients. According to this page, among the researchers disclosing an affiliation with Aclaris include: 1) Dr. Elise Olsen; 2) Dr. Jerry Shapiro; 3) Dr. Rodney Sinclair; 4) Dr. Antonella Tosti;  and 5) Dr. Ken Washenik. The latter three of these are affiliated with an unbelievable number of companies that are working on a hair loss cure or treatment. Dr. Washenik’s presentation is titled: “Emerging treatments of androgenetic alopecia” and I would not be surprised in the least if he made a presentation by the exact same title 20 years ago (alongside the also ancient Dr. George Cotsarelis).
  • A significant number of presentations entail hair loss, hair disorders, hair care and hair styling in African Americans and other people of color, especially women. One of the presentation abstracts even suggests that hair loss in African American women is under-reported, under researched and currently an epidemic.
  • Related to the above, a majority of the hair related presentations seem to be led by women. Earlier conference presentations were dominated by men, but this has been changing rapidly in recent years as I have mentioned several times on this blog in the past. I guess men have been taking too long to bring about a hair loss cure, and, in the words of Mr. Bannon: “The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history“.
  • The highly regarded researcher Dr. Rox Anderson (covered here) is presenting on low-level laser therapy (LLLT) and hair growth alongside Dr. Maria Hordinsky and Dr. Ronda Farah. I have neglected LLLT (photobiomodulation) during the past year, but am glad to see that Dr. Anderson is still a believer in the technology. Usually, companies or people who are selling laser devices are the biggest proponents of LLLT, leaving much room for skepticism.

74th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology

The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) will hold its 74th Annual Meeting between March 4 and March 8 in Washington DC. The schedule has around a dozen presentations involving scalp hair, although most seem pretty generic.

Not surprisingly, on the hair forums, only one presentation is garnering any kind of discussion: Samumed’s 12 minute summary of phase II clinical trial results of its SM04554 topical hair loss product.

It should be noted that Samumed already presented some favorable findings about its phase II trials towards the end of last year.  See my summary of that news here.  I am not expecting anything particularly impressive in this latest presentation, but would be more than happy to be wrong

You can follow the AAD on Twittter here.  Samumed will probably add its presentation summary on its media page after the conference is over.

FYI: Several people e-mailed me about this conference and posted comments about it in the last blog post.  Thanks to those people, but please try to only e-mail me news that you know is not covered widely on the hair loss forums.  I check those forums almost every day!  If you have a unique take on something, feel free to e-mail me.