Angela Christiano, Elaine Fuchs, George Cotsarelis, Kevin McElwee, World Congress of Dermatology

23rd World Congress of Dermatology: Vancouver, Canada

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23rd World Congress of Dermatology.
23rd World Congress of Dermatology.

23rd World Congress of Dermatology

The 23rd World Congress of Dermatology starts on June 8, 2015 and will run through June 13, 2015 in Vancouver, Canada. It is run by the International League of Dermatological Societies (ILDS). The ILDS is an umbrella organisation for professional dermatology organisations of all sizes around the world. You can follow their Twitter account for conference updates.

I was not paying too much attention to this conference before. When I first browsed through their website some time ago, it seemed like most of the subjects would be non-hair related.

However, when I went through their website in more detail today, I noticed that the Congress President was a hair transplant surgeon by the name of Dr. Jerry Shapiro. More importantly, one of the main (plenary) sessions will be presented by the esteemed Dr. Elaine Fuchs, who I have discussed a few times on this blog before. Amond the main sponsors includes L’Oréal and Allergan.

There is a workshop on hair biology on Tuesday that will be led by the renowned Dr. George Cotsarelis, Replicel’s scientist Dr. Kevin McElwee and Dr. Amos Gilhar of Israel. This might end up being the most interesting part of the conference for blog readers.

There is an interesting presentation on the neglected field of ethnic hair disorders by South African professor Nonhlanhla Khumalo. Lebanese doctor Mazen Kurban (who has co-authored a book chapter with Dr. Angela Christiano in the past) will present on genetic hair and nail disorders.

Other presentations of interest include: one on hair disorders; one on hair transplants; one on telogen effluvium; and one on cicatricial alopecias. Several of the laser light therapy related presentations will hopefully also discuss their increase use for regrowing scalp hair. Like FDA cleared devices such as the HairMax Lasercomb for example.

Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner, Transsexual

Bruce Jenner: Becomes a woman at age 65 and gets more hair

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Yesterday’s biggest news story in the US per Google Trends was about Bruce Jenner’s heavily photoshopped but still stunning transformation on the cover photo of the latest Vanity Fair magazine.  He also officially announced his new female name of Caitlyn Jenner.  The video clip further below has more images.

For those who do not know, Bruce Jenner was an Olympic gold medalist American athletic legend in the 1970s and appeared on the front of Wheaties cereal boxes: an honor that is only given to the best of the best athletes in the US.  Bruce epitomized the American macho male.  His transition into female Caitlyn at the very late age of 65 has shocked a lot of middle aged and older males who were his fans, and I talked to one at a bar yesterday who was quite depressed about it!  I on the other hand am always happy to see a male-to-female (MTF) transsexual so that I can examine whats going on with her hair.  More of my thoughts follow the video.

I have covered MTF transsexuals on this blog before (e.g., see Danielle Hallett and transgender couple) for one specific reason: my interest in what happens to their scalp hair once they get on antiandrogens and female hormones such as estrogen, and especially if they also have MTF surgery where the testicles are removed.  Such surgery guarantees that further balding will cease (or never start if it hasn’t already).  However, there is no guarantee that such drastic surgery will regrow hair on totally bald scalp, although estrogen supplementation after castration can regrow a lot of hair it seems.  This would imply that hair is never permanently gone, as has been postulated in various recent studies (hair is still there, but progenitor cells are gone).

Bruce Jenner’s scalp hair does seem to have become better since he commenced his transition to Caitlyn.  However, he was never balding significantly and the closest photo I found of him with some very mild frontal hair loss is here.  So its hard to tell how much hormone therapy has helped his hair and whether he actually grew new hair, or whether his existing hair became thicker and fuller. One of the articles I read yesterday mentioned that Bruce Jennner had some kind of hair related surgery as part of his transition.  His main transition surgery went on for 10 hours.  It does not seem like the now Caitlyn Jenner has had genital surgery yet, so she is still producing significant male hormones.

In future, if I cover a transsexual story, I hope to only focus on ones where the former male was significantly bald and gained hair after becoming female.  However, this story was so huge that I could not ignore it. Besides representing yet another milestone in the transgender world, it represents even more of a drastic shift to the left in American culture, which much of the rest of the world often ends up following.  If China, Russia and the Islamic world shifted left in a similar manner, I think the world would be much more peaceful. Imagine if Vladimir Putin and the Saudi King were to convert to women!  It would definitely lead to much more peace in the world in my opinion.

Caitlyn’s new Twitter account got a million followers within a few hours and currently has over two million followers.  Even president Obama replied to her Tweet.  Really unbelievable how the world has changed culturally and technologically in the past two decades.